Imported Americans : the story of the experiences of a disguised American and his wife studying the immigration question

IMPORTED AMERICANS

The Real Problem

MPORTED
AMERICANS

The story of the
experiences of a
disguised American and his
'wife studying the immigra-
tion question & & & &

By Broughton Brandenburg

With sixty-six illustrations
from photographs by the author

GUILFORDH. HATHAWAY
UBMW.

NEW YORK' FREDERICK A.
STOKES COMPANY • PUBLISHERS

Copyright, zpoj, 1904,
BY FRANK LESLIE PUBLISHING HOUSE

Copyright, 1904,
BY FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY

This edition published in August, 1904

This volume is dedicated to my brave
little wife, who endured with heroism
conditions that, while not unbearable
for me, were superlative hardships for
a woman of delicacy and refinement.

B. B.

Clay Place, Mamaronick,
June 23, 1904.

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGB

I THE IMPETUS AND THE METHOD . . i

II LIFE IN A NEW YORK TENEMENT . . 8

III To NAPLES IN THE STEERAGE OF THE

LAHN 25

IV CONDITIONS IN THE NEAPOLITAN ZONE, 47
V IN THE ROMAN ZONE 61

VI IN THE HEEL AND TOE OF THE BOOT . 71

VII GuALTIERI-SlCAMINO AND THE SQUAD-

RITO FAMILY 83

VIII THE SICILIAN COUNTRYSIDE .... ^104

IX THE DEPARTURE 119

X FROM SICILY TO NAPLES 131

XI THROUGH THE CITY OF THIEVES . . 138

XII ROGUERY AND ILLITERACY . . . . 151

XIII THE EMBARKATION PROCESS .... 159

XIV THE VOYAGE 171

XV THE VOYAGE (Continued) 184

XVI NEARING THE GATE 198

XVII WITHIN THE PORTALS OF THE NEW

WORLD 205

XVIII THROUGH ELLIS ISLAND 215

XIX THE DISPERSION 228

XX THE STRUGGLES OF THE GUA.LTIERI

BOYS IN NEW YORK 238

XXI LEGISLATION AND EVASION .... 246

XXII WHAT TO DO WITH THE IMMIGRANT

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The Real Problem Frontispiece

The Tenement in Houston Street in which
the Author and his Wife lived ( The chimney-
shadow marks their room) Facing page 8

Mrs. Brandenburg in her wretched Tene-
ment-room " " 12

Life on the Steerage-passengers' Deck on the

Lahn " " 28

Preparing to Serve a Meal on the Lahn from

the Food-tanks and Bread-baskets ... " " 38

Peasant Types " " 50

Mangling Hemp " " 56

Morning in the Village and Vineyards . . " " 64

Threshing Beans " " 72

Scilla— Draught-oxen of Italy " " 82

The Messenger— The Guide— The House

of the Squadritos — The Town (Gualtieri) " " 90

Part of the Family gathered in the Kitchen
(From left to right : Ina, Tono, Giovanina,
^Antonio, Mrs. Squadrito, Giovanni, Jr.,
Nicola, Maria) — Felicia Pulejo— Concetta " " 98

Visitors in the Author's Room — Teresa di
Bianca — The Old Woman up the Valley —
Shyness in Shawl and Pattens — Small
Children Labor in the Fields .... " " 104

x LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Giacomo Marini, the Municipal Secretary —
Nicola Squadrito at Work ( Carmelo Merlino
at the right Facing page 114

Ina and Her Friends in Procession to the

Church for Farewell Blessings .... " " 1 24

DEPARTURE FROM GUALTIERI
" Declaring " in the Messina Office — Party's
Baggage on Lighter — Friends, Neighbors
and Relatives " " 132

The Storied Vicolo del Pallonetto in Naples, " " 146

At the Doorway of the Capitaneria — Author's

Party on the Quay " " 162

MID-VOYAGE SCENES
Mora — Syrian Jews — Prostrated by the Swell

— Children Escaping Seasickness ... " '* 184

Half a Dozen Races on Common Ground —

His Broth-cup — The Immigrant Madonna, " " 190

LIFE ABOARD THE Prinzessin Irene
Men's Sleeping-quarters — Ladling out Food
— The Purser Hurling Passengers About —
On the Fo'c's'1-head -. . " " 194

Part of the Author's Party — All Eyes to the

Statue of Liberty «« " 206

Croatians and Italians — Swedes Arriving —

Loading the Barges, New York ... " " 210

Rushing Immigrants on Barges — Inspectors

and Immigrants at Ellis Island .... " " 214

Stairway of Separation — Checking into Pens, " " 218

Excluded for Age — Waiting for Immigrant

Friends . " " 222

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xi

The Immigrants' Track Through Ellis Island, Facing page 227

Mr. Broughton Brandenburg, as he Looked
when He Passed through Ellis Island as an
Immigrant " " 230

Stonington — The Barber-shop — The Squad-

rito House " " 234

Night-porter's Staff at Siegel-Cooper Com-
pany's (Nunzio Giunta in front of post) . " " 242

Nicola Curro at Work — Ina Americanized —
Saint's Figure, covered with Bags of
Money " " 264

Nicola Curro Studying English in the
Author's Home in New York " " 280

CHAPTER I

THE IMPETUS AND THE METHOD

THAT there was a tremendous increase in im-
migration in prospect was announced by the
agents of the great immigrant-carrying lines
of steamships as early as January of 1903. All Europe
seemed stirred with that tide of unrest. It was to be
a great year for the departure from the Continental hives
of the new swarms, and an authoritative foreign journal
prophesied that the sum total would be 1,500,000 for
the twelve months.

In America the cry was redoubled that the doors of
the United States should be altogether closed or ren-
dered still more difficult to pass. The Shattuc bill was
about to find favor in the House of Representatives,
the Lodge bill was cooking in Boston, and in every
newspaper or periodical of the land articles and edito-
rials were appearing that attacked or defended various
phases, conditions or proposed remedies of immigra-
tion. Even in the German and Italian papers, which
speak for Germany, Austria and Italy, the most fertile
immigrant-producing grounds, there was but the barest
trifle printed that was from the point of -view of the im-
migrant himself. In the American papers there was
absolutely nothing.

One day I was in the Grand Central station in New
York, ready to take a train for New Haven, and as I
came up to the gate I saw, passing through before me,
a group of more than twenty newly arrived Italians,
following the leadership of one short, black, thick-set

2 IMPORTED AMERICANS

prosperous-seeming man who spoke Italian to the left
and broken English to the right. They were tagged
for Boston and other New England towns, and, bear-
ing their heavy burdens of luggage and bundles, with
faces drawn with weariness, eyes dull with too much
gazing at the wonders of a new land, with scarce a
smile among them except on the faces of the unreason-
ing children, they were herded together, counted off as
they passed through the gate and taken aboard the train,
much as if they had been some sort of animals worth
more than ordinary care, instead of rational human be-
ings. Here they were in charge of the conductor, who
grouped them in seats according to the towns to which
they were destined.

When I was seated and had unfolded my paper the
first thing that caught my eye was an article in which
a noted sociologist was liberally quoted recommending
the total suspension of immigration for three years and
then new laws admitting only those who would come
with their families and were trained in some work de-
manding skill. The arguments were specious, but as I
looked over the top of the paper at the poor creatures
huddled in the car seats about, very thinly dressed for
so cold a January day, it occurred to me that the true
light, the revelation of the natural remedies and the only
real understanding of the immigrant situation lay in
seeing from the underside, in getting the immigrants'
point of view to compare with the public-spirited
American one.

That was the leaven and it grew. The idea ramified
into a plan, and this plan was laid before Mr. Ellery Sedg-
wick, the editor of Leslie's Monthly, and very soon it
was decided that I was to go seeking the immigrants'
point of view and was to take my wife with me.

IMPETUS AND THE METHOD 3

All of the intricacies of how, where and just what,
evolved slowly, but this in brief was our general plan:
First of all we must choose the ground for our investi-
gation. Since Italy sends not only three times more
immigrants than any other country, but a larger
proportion of the sort that are objected to in
America, it was plain that our work lay among the
Italians. We must know the language well enough to
ask questions and understand answers; we must know
the conditions of Italian life in America in order to know
what good and what evil things to trace to their sources.
To understand the people properly, we must live with
them and be of them, and, to get the fullest grasp on the
process of their transmutation we must become immi-
grants ourselves and re-enter our own country as
strangers and aliens.

Therefore we must take up our abode in the Italian
quarter, and, when duly prepared and informed, voyage
to the home land with some of the returning Italians
and, having learned the actual conditions there, come
back in the steerage and pass through Ellis Island,
bringing with us some typical immigrant family whose
exact circumstances we had fully learned in their na-
tive community. Using them as a central strand we
would weave a story of small things that should be
worthy of being taken into reckoning by thinking
minds, as a new and important fund of informa-
tion.

Though we knew full well the hardships which we
must endure for many long months, the difficulties
which would arise like forbidding barriers, I am
free to say that the things on which we had counted
and against which we had armed ourselves did not
come to pass for the most part; while a multitude of

4 IMPORTED AMERICANS

things happened that were as unexpected as gold in
breakfast food.

Work began at once, by the book, on the language,
and while in the wilds of Yucatan in February we
were studying Italian. In March we landed in New
York late one night from the Ward liner Monterey, and
the very next day went into the Italian quarter seeking
a place to live. When we had been in the reeking
streets, amid the tumult of innumerable children, and
had entered a few of the tenements, my wife turned
pale and sick and said:

"Don't think I am faltering at the threshold; but,
please, if we must go through all this, let us have a
week of comfort and preparation. Then we will take
the plunge."

Thus I knew how much harder it was for her, with
all her love of comfort and her accustomedness to it,
to forsake it for any purpose, however important or
worth while, than it was for me, who, manlike, enjoy
" the fare of the field, and the habit of the strange land."
And thereafter, particularly when we were in the steer-
age of the Prin^essin Irene and were bound home, ac-
tually counting the half-hours of the twelve-day voy-
age amid utter wretchedness, never did I hear one com-
plaint from her lips or did she give other sign of failing.

At the very outset we had difficulty in gaining ad-
. mission to any all-Italian house. In the tenements
where several rooms were to be had, the Italian real-
estate agents eyed us with suspicion and averred
solemnly that they were all full, even to the roof. This
they asserted, notwithstanding empty apartments to be
seen from the street and " Rooms to Let" signs with-
out number. In the boarding houses we were met
with a very cold reception even before it was known

IMPETUS AND THE METHOD 5

what we wanted. In the Italian hotels it was the same
way with the exception of one south of Washington
Square, and there the proprietor kindly offered to let us
in at twice the ordinary price, according to the rates
tacked on the room doors. At last, however, we came
to the domicile of the Chevalier Celestin Tonella. Here
we found our haven.

It was some time after we were settled before we
learned that we were under the roof of a nobleman. If
we had been familiar with the nice distinctions of Ital-
ian caste, however, we should have known it instantly.
The three houses Nos. 141, 145, 147 West Houston
Street, entered by the door of No. 147, seemed to us
very little different from many of the other tenements
in which we had been, and indeed they were not. The
difference all lay in the master not in the mansion. If
I had known before paying my rent in advance that my
landlord had a title, I should have demurred, thinking
that in his house there would be life a little too high in
grade for the real Italian quarter; but before I knew
the Chevalier's station, I had learned that we were
in the proper element and surrounded by the very
atmosphere we sought, though the same at meal times
would have almost killed a strong man in his prime.

Just before we gained admittance to the desired quar-
ters we were in the office of a real-estate man who has
an exclusively Italian custom in the lower West Side
quarter, renting to people of his own race and tongue
houses owned by wealthy people up-town. When he
had refused to give us an opportunity at anything on
his lists I said to him:

" See here. We have been hunting rooms all day.
We have been frustrated from Mulberry Street to Fif-
teenth. I have got money and can give references,

6 IMPORTED AMERICANS

but nobody seems to care about either. What is the
matter ? Why can we not get into an Italian house ?"

"Scoose me, mister, bot wye youse want to ?"

" We want to live with Italians in order to learn to
speak Italian properly. "

"Yes, all ri — ght. I don' know wye." A shrug of
the shoulders and a side glance with dropped eyes.
" Mebbe Eyetayun peoples sink-a youse try to fin' a
out somesings, mebbe don' a want somebodys fin'
youse. Youse knows deys-a only dirty dagoes."

This last was said with a bitterness which showed
clearly how well the Italians understand the tolerant,
semi-contemptuous regard of Americans towards them
and how keenly they resent it. I understood at once
how and why they suspected us because we, who were
obviously "Americans proper" as they nicely express
the difference between the native and imported Ameri-
can, desired to come and make our home among them.
Only a knowledge that the persons are still living and
a wholesome respect for the libel law prevent me
from telling how well founded were the suspicions
among the Italians of the "Americans proper" who
lived about us later.

Thus, to begin with we were met by the barrier of
suspicion and misunderstanding raised against us by all
our neighbors. We had to overcome it carefully or do
our work in spite of it.

CHAPTER II

LIFE IN A NEW YORK ITALIAN TENEMENT

OUR room was about seven feet wide and
twelve long. It was half of a room of ordi-
nary size that had been cut nicely in two by
a partition, and had a sort of small extension at the
back that looked out on the rear of the house. It was
barely possible to get by the bed in order to pass from
the door to the rear window. The bed itself, while not
being a geometrical point, had neither length, breadth,
nor thickness. In one corner was a small cook-stove,
that should have been under pension. There was a
small table in the tiny extension, covered with a dark-
patterned piece of oilcloth. A careful inspection of
it showed me that dark oilcloth has certain advantages
over light. A kerosene lamp with a discouragingly
short wick stood on an imitation marble mantelpiece
that was a relic of the days of the old mansion's
former glory.

We contrived to get one steamer trunk under the bed,
and as soon as we could sort out articles of essential
wear, the others drifted to that place of uncertainty
called "storage."

Some little time after we had entered the house we
were able to get a room twice the size on the top floor,
and we contrived to dispose ourselves with some de-
gree of comfort. Aside from the size and the addition
of a good bed, the room and furnishings of our second
chamber agreed with the first.

8 IMPORTED AMERICANS

During the time we lived there we dressed in such a
manner as not to attract the attention of the people
about us to the fact that we were not of them, only
keeping with us apparel for use when we indulged our-
selves in an evening's relaxation from the hard life and
stole away up-town for a bite of something good to
eat and the cheer of the voices of friends speaking un-
adulterated English.

The first night we were in the house we were very
weary with the operation of shifting bases and change
of station in life, and, finding it almost impossible to read
by the light of the lamp, we sought repose about ten
o'clock; but just about that time from the floor below
us, where we could hear the babel of the voices of men
and women, as it were a family party or something of
the sort, there began to come a series of vocal explo-
sions. It seemed to be two or more men shouting
single words at each other in concert. They enun-
ciated with great energy, at first in a repressed sort of
way, but after ten or fifteen words their voices rose to
an alarming pitch. Then would come a pause filled in
with laughter and chatter, and once more the word-
slinging contest would begin. So fiercely were the
words expelled that for a long time we could not tell
what they were. At last we 'made out "sei" and
"otto," and as it was impossible to go to sleep with
so lively a social function going on below, I got up, lit
the lamp and took up our Italian books. A moment's
consultation of the books and a little listening showed
us that they were counting, or at least hurling numbers
at random at each other. It was inexplicable to us, but
it was our first glance into the inside of Italian quarter
life.

I was heartily glad, however, that the birthday party,

The Tenement in Houston Street in which the Author and
his Wife lived ( The chimney-shadow marks their room]

LIFE IN A TENEMENT 9

christening or wedding anniversary, whichever it was,
must surely be a matter of rare occasion.

Imagine our feelings when ten o'clock the next night
came and the same rumpus broke forth once more, only
with greater vigor. In vain we conjectured the cause.
Perhaps they were in the midst of a week's celebration
of some church festival. Perhaps there was some sort
of a tournament on.

At last I determined to investigate. Though it was a
wet night and walls, ledges and railings about the rear
of the house were dripping and slimy, I clambered
down from the back window to a point where I could
look in below.

There were two basement rooms opening into each
other, and there must be a third that opened onto the
street in front of the house. The first room was a
much-cluttered kitchen with broken boxes of several
sorts of macaroni exposed to view, a well-heated
range, a cook in white clothes, innumerable bottles of
wine on the shelves and dirty dishes on one side while
the clean ones were in orderly piles on the other.

In the second and inner room there was a thick, blue
atmosphere of pipe and cigar smoke through which
the gas jets in the centre of the room flared sharply.
Around the uncovered tables of varying sizes were Ital-
ians to the number of a score or more. More than half
of them were in rough working clothes. Some had
beer, some had wine before them and some were eating
the stringing macaroni from large dishes heaped with it.
Three of them were under the gaslight and were leaning
forward in postures of straining excitement, and as each
spoke a number he thrust out one hand or both with
fingers held out, — three, four, seven, perhaps only one.
All the numbers spoken were under ten, and the num-

10 IMPORTED AMERICANS

bers spoken did not correspond with the numbers in-
dicated by the fingers. After watching them a min-
ute I saw that each man was trying to guess what
number the other man would indicate on his fingers,
and a correct guess ended each bout; then would come
laughter at the expense of the defeated one, and the
game would begin over again for points.

Later inquiry as to the name and popularity of the
game brought forth the information that it is called
/ mora and is very general through southern Italy, be-
ing a favorite diversion among the country people. In
Italy country boys will get together in a corner and
play mora till they are exhausted, and in the place
under us I have known the last hoarsely shouted num-
ber to sound after the hour of three.

As I climbed back into my own room I took with
me the satisfying knowledge that we should probably
hear mora and sing-songing every night while we
dwelt in the place. It was evidently a restaurant and
used as a sort of club house by a company of the con-
vivial and congenial. There was not the slightest indi-
cation on the street front that the place was anything
but an ordinary tenement basement.

The commissary end of our campaign after informa-
tion was very weak. Home cooking is well enough
with facilities. It is a destroyer of peace and well-be-
ing, without them. Therefore we began a series of
disastrous experiments in lunching and dining out in
first one and then the other Italian restaurants there-
abouts, and after a plucky and determined resistance to
the enemy we succumbed. Our stomachs demanded
time to accustom themselves to the change, and so we
took to Italian fare only in moderation, securing at last
an ability to eat and enjoy it.

LIFE IN A TENEMENT 11

After I had discovered that there was a restaurant in
the basement of our own house, I made inquiry of the
landlord as to its desirability, and on his recommenda-
tion we went in there one day for lunch. We found
that, as I had surmised, there was a third room in the
front, and in this a large table was set. At its head was
an important-looking red-bearded gentleman whom I
knew was an editorre of one of the many small Ital-
ian publications put forth in New York. Ranged down
each side were men of several sorts. There was an
animated conversation in progress as we entered, but
a sudden silence fell as they saw us. Looks of sus-
picion passed, and though they greeted us in a con-
strained sort of way as we took places at the foot of
the table, I could see that we represented a note of dis-
cord. The proprietor, who was cook as well, and his
wife and sister-in-law were effusive in their welcome,
and after we had tasted the character of the food I
felt that we were nearer a solution of the eating ques-
tion than at any time before. The men at the table
were visibly relieved when they found that we could
not understand Italian, and ventured remarks now and
then to test our knowledge. Some of these were of
a very personal nature concerning us; and, being able to
understand some few of the words and phrases, I
knew this but behaved as if there were no word of all
they said that had any meaning to me.

That evening when we came in for dinner we found
that a little table for the two of us had been put in a
remote corner of the long room, and though the places
in which we had been at noon were empty, plates and
chairs had been removed, so that we well knew " out-
siders," especially ladies, were not desired at their
board.

12 IMPORTED AMERICANS

Once they were perfectly sure we did not understand
anything of which they spoke, they became just as free
of speech as they must have been before. This was
very fine for us. An understanding of the good Italian
they spoke, which was barely sufficient to trace and
know the current of conversation, rapidly broadened
into ability to get more of the full meaning. It was ill
for speaking-practice, though, for we used only English
in the place, and I found that if I used the Italian that 1
heard them speaking at the table, to any one outside in
other parts of the Italian quarter there was an absolute
failure to understand me. At first I thought this was
because of my poor pronunciation and awkward at-
tempts, but the more I listened the more I learned that
we were absorbing better Italian than was spoken by
the mass of Italians in New York, and when I first men-
tioned the subject to an Italian friend, newly made, he
laughingly explained that there are about twenty va-
rieties of Italian speech, and that in the restaurant in the
Houston Street basement I was hearing Milanese while
all about outside were Romans, Neapolitans, Genoese,
Turinese, Calabrese, Sicilians, and so on. Greater
knowledge of the language showed me that so wide
are the differences that a man from certain portions of
the north of Italy is almost unable to converse with a
man from the south, even if willing to do so. There
is the bitterest sectional feeling, and people of different
provinces are constantly arrayed against each other. I
found this feeling very strong between the Calabrese
and the Sicilian.

The men who took lunch at the basement restaurant
were of a more intelligent class than those who came
there at night, and so, as we came to understand more
each day, we began to learn more and more of the very

Mrs. Brandenburg in Her wretched Tenement-room

&JIM&

H.

MAM*

LIFE IN A TENEMENT 13

facts of inside life among Italians for which we
were seeking.

I do not know that we got so much well-rounded
information from their chance conversation as tips on
the things for which to be on the lookout. Some lit-
tle things in particular that had no bearing on generali-
ties are contained in the following incidents.

Gossip one day told me that a certain editor of an
Italian newspaper of some standing had written a
scathing article directed against Mr. Frank Munsey, at
that time the new owner of the News, and William
Randolph Hearst of the American and Journal. He had
said things which he felt sure would make both of
those gentlemen get down their rapiers and do battle
either editorially or in person. He hoped it would be
both, as he felt he had a righteous cause and needed the
advertising. The day his editorial was published he
stayed close to the telephone all day in his office expect-
ing a telephone message from one or the other. When
the papers of both attacked editors appeared next day
without even a one-line hint of the deadly blow which
had been dealt them, the Italian editor very nearly fell
to the floor in a frothing rage. For an hour he raved
like a wild man and was only calmed by the assurance
from a cool-headed friend that both were preparing
overwhelming answers for their print next day, so he
settled himself to write what he thought would be an
anticipation of their replies. Not a sign did the two
smitten ones give, and it was not long before some one
found out through friends in the offices of both papers
that in neither had either the first or second assaults In
the Italian journal even been so much as heard of.

One of the men at the table had his father in this
country with him, and the father, having been here two

14 IMPORTED AMERICANS

years and saved $600 working in a piano factory for
$1.40 per day, wished to return to Italy to spend his
last days and, desiring to save his passage money, had
followed the example of another old man and arranged
to get himself deported. I listened closely and heard
the son telling with great amusement how "feeble"
the old man became when he went to make his appli-
cation for deportation as an alien who was unable to
support himself in America because of age and ill health.

At another time a newcomer at the table related to an
interested audience what had been told him of the
very wild condition of the country even so far east as
Kentucky. He gave some instances of a feud, that had
been generally printed a short time before, as if they
were the actual doings of hordes of savages in the
mountains. He may not have been as far wrong as it
seems at first glance, of course, but the incident aptly
illustrated how little conception the mass of otherwise
well-informed aliens have of the great country which
is giving them more of comfort, liberty and opportu-
nity than they have ever had before.

Our landlord and his wife represented a class which
is taken all too slightly into account by those Americans
who are interested in the immigration question; for it
has an influence which, while positive in few things
and negative in many, is nevertheless very strong and
powerfully affects the destinies of Italians in America.

The Chevalier Celestin Tonella is a man of striking
presence. He is large and heavy and has the erect
bearing of a soldier. He has the dominant nose and
the composed air of one accustomed to command.
The time was when he stood well up in the army. His
exact rank I never learned.

His wife is a small, slender, gray-haired woman with

LIFE IN A TENEMENT 15

the unmistakable stamp of the gentlewoman upon her,
and she speaks a number of languages as well as having
the deft-finger gift of making, painting, broidering and
sewing, as is the way with Italian women of position.

Of their story 1 know nothing, except that once she
was in the patronage of a duchess and was at court,
and he was also in favor with the high and mighty; but
now they are running Nos. 141, 145 and 147 Houston
Street for a living and are here in America with no plans
for going back to Italy. How or why they came, who
knows ? So far as the interests of this work are con-
cerned I do not care, and have introduced them in so
personal a fashion only because they are so typical a
family of better-class Italians emigrated to America.
Last year the number of alien immigrants landed in the
United States who were able to come in the cabin in-
stead of in the steerage was 64,269 and the year pre-
vious 82,055. Of this number more than one third
were Italians.

In my personal acquaintance among Italians in New
York there is a man who was formerly a priest in
Rome and is now a saloon-keeper and banker on the
East Side; another man who has four titles and an un-
enviable record in Genoa, Milan, Venice, Paris and
Vienna, who owns three barber-shops up-town and two
resorts in Elizabeth Street capitalized with the patri-
mony of a young gentlewoman of Udine who followed
him to America when his family had cast him off and
it was too hot for him to remain in Italy, France or Aus-
tria; a third man who is a banker not far from where
we lived who is conducting a flourishing "padrone"
business founded on funds which he abstracted while
an official in Naples before that city was bankrupted by
its rulers.

16 IMPORTED AMERICANS

There are three. I could give a number more, but
those will suffice. The point in the whole considera-
tion is that the lower class Italians in this country con-
tinue to pay the respect and homage to those of their
race who have been born to position, without regard to
the changed and democratic conditions under which
both gentleman and peasant are now Irving.

An Italian of humble birth who may have prospered
in this country and have risen to a position of com-
mercial and political eminence among New Yorkers
will cringe unhesitatingly to some worthless scamp who
chances to be well born. I have seen this instanced
many times and in various ways. Twenty years of
residence and fifteen of citizenship in the United States
will change the average Italian into a very American
sort of person, but I know to a certainty that he will
suffer silently at the hands of a countryman of superior
birth what he would not submit to for one minute from
an American no matter what might be the latter's sta-
tion in life. It is certainly a curious fact.

In general it is safe to say that half of the Italians
from the better classes who come to America are far
more undesirable than any of the lower-class immi-
grants except that certain class of habitual criminals
who are doing so much to get their race despised by
honest, clean-handed Americans.

One of their worst influences is to retard the assimi-
lation of their people by the great American body politic,
by refusing to be themselves assimilated, even going
so far as to send their children to private schools in or-
der that they may not learn English, and in insisting on
wearing clothes of imported make or pattern. They
are by birth, tradition and intent the leaders of Italian
communities in this country, and their prejudices and

LIFE IN A TENEMENT 17

examples confuse if not entirely divert the natural social
development of their humbler countrymen all about
them.

Many of them are estimable, as are Chevalier Tonella
and his clever, cheery wife, but their influence is nega-
tively wrong.

One evening I was sitting with an Italian carpenter,
a friend of the landlord's, in a corner of a Thompson
Street saloon, and we were discussing the effect of union-
labor regulations on the labor of immigrants and the
way in which skilled masons, carpenters, cabinet-mak-
ers, smiths, etc., are forced to become peddlers, com-
mon laborers, bootblacks, etc., instead of having op-
portunities to follow their trades, when we were inter-
rupted by the sudden appearance of a very excited
man. He was a young barber, flushed with wine and
good fortune. He burst into the room with a shout
and a rattle of oaths and slammed down a handful of
mixed money on a table.

The people about were saying so much and deliver-
ing it in so short a time that it was a full five minutes
before they began conversation piano enough for
me to get the idea. The young barber had won
three hundred dollars at lotto and had just re-
ceived it.

1 knew that in Italy nearly every block in the cities
has its banco di lotto run by the government and
supposed that the young chap had been playing the
lottery from this side and had won but I soon learned
that the national love of lotto gambling has been
transplanted to America, and that since the laws here
forbid lotteries the Italians of the country are forced
to run them under cover, and do so very successfully.
After that I often heard of plays made by my friends

i8 IMPORTED AMERICANS

and of winnings now and then by people I did not know,
but never at any time was I able to fathom the method
by which the business was carried on. Instead of be-
ing officially conducted by any society, each lottery is
entirely a private venture, and its patronage is confined
to those who are compare as the dialect has it. It
is a word difficult to render into English, but all those
Italians who come from one town or province and have
mutual interests and trust each other are compare.
Not only does this freemasonry exist as to lotto, but
it pervades all their other social relations. It is a potent
force never reckoned with among those who persist in
misunderstanding the "dirty dago."

Very soon after we had taken up our residence in the
quarter I found out the true reason for the prospect of
an enormously increased immigration for 1903. The
ponderous articles and profoundly wise comments on
the question had attributed it to a number of things.
Among these were: an increasing demand for labor that
made a market for the immigrants' muscles, advertis-
ing efforts on the part of competing steamship lines,
oppression of the Jews, deflection of German emigra-
tion from South America to North America, increased
taxes and failure of crops in southern Europe. Balder-
dash and folly ! The truth was that every man who
had any relatives to bring over to the United States had
read of the new strictures in immigration laws that
impended and was straining every nerve to bring them
and get them passed before the new laws could be
passed and put into effect. Thousands and thousands
of people whom the laws would not have affected in
the least came this last year when if there had been no
change of legislation in prospect, they would have
waited a year or two more. I know personally of a

LIFE IN A TENEMENT 19

score of families whose plans were affected by this
very thing and by no other consideration.

It should be remarked at this stage that one of the
first things I learned among the Italians (and I knew
later that it extended to all races) was that the alien
considers the United States code of immigration laws
a very complex, fearsome and inexplicable thing, to be
thoroughly respected but if possible, evaded.

More than once I have been asked the following
question which bears its own token:

" If a man and his family are good enough to live
in Italy, why are they not good enough to live in the
United States?"

The records of immigrants who have gone insane
either on shipboard or in Ellis Island, or have broken
down as soon as ever they were safely landed in the
United States, are striking proof of how persons entirely
within the bounds of the laws worry over the chance
of exclusion.

One day after we had changed into our third-floor
room we heard a frightful row among the neighbors
below. A moment's listening showed that some
woman was berating a little girl, and some man was
interposing in the child's behalf. I suppose it was a
man and his wife and the eldest of their three girls,
who lived on that floor. I cannot give the entire
conversation, but the following extract will tell the
story :

Said the mother in very forcible Tuscan:

"You shall speak Italian and nothing else, if I must
kill you; for what will your grandmother say when you
go back to the old country, if you talk this pig's Eng-
lish?"

" Aw, gwan ! Youse tink I 'm goin' to talk dago 'n' be

20 IMPORTED AMERICANS

called a guinea ! Not on your life. I 'm 'n American, I
am, 'n' you go way back 'n' sit down."

The mother evidently understood the reply well
enough, for she poured forth a torrent of Italian mixed
with strange misplaced American oaths, and then the
father ended matters by saying in mixed Italian and
English:

"Shut up, both of you. I wish I spoke English like
the children do."

A very sensible German whom I know, a man of
good education and holding an important position in
the Ward line, has often told me that he was compelled
to learn to speak good English in order to keep from
being laughed at by his children, who contrived to es-
cape correction whenever he used broken English in
arraigning them.

One of our methods of investigation was to go from
one place of business to another in the quarter and, if
possible, buy some trifle, meanwhile asking questions.
We found that it is usually the children who do the
reading, writing, interpreting and accounting in English
for their parents, and an extremely bright and quick
lot of youngsters they seemed to be. In some places
we saw startling contrasts between the two genera-
tions: one rooted in all that is Italian and absolutely un-
able to allow themselves to be absorbed and assimilated
and the other intensely and thoroughly American in
every idea and mannerism. It would be easy to un-
derstand how this could be so had these same children
been well mixed with native-born children, but in all
that community and in the schools they attended the
percentage of Italians was so great that one would have
thought it was the native-born children who would
have been swallowed up in Italianism. It is a remark-

LIFE IN A TENEMENT 21

able fact that the Italian children insist on learning and
speaking English alone, though it is not the native
tongue of more than one in ten persons about them.

One of the general conditions, to the true significance
of which our attention was called by the conversation
of the midday gathering around the table in the Hous-
ton Street basement, is the pernicious system of Italian
"banks." They are scattered everywhere through the
Italian colonies of New York, Boston, Buffalo, Pitts-
burg, Philadelphia, etc., and, being ultra-parasitical in
their nature, their harmful agencies may be imagined.

In Greater New York, and in its New Jersey purlieus
which are so closely connected that they pulse with the
life of the great city, there are 412 Italian banks with
charters to do banking business and fully as many more
that operate without charters. Many of these are com-
bination businesses, money exchanges, steamship-ticket
offices and banks, groceries and banks, saloons and
banks, and often only the patrons are aware that there
is a banking business at all.

Furthermore the banking business is conducted on a
very different basis from that usual in American banks
of the various grades. Every employer of Italian labor
in New York city knows that if he wishes to get a gang
of men quickly to go to a job of work he need only
telephone to an Italian bank. It will be found to be a
very effective employment bureau. I have known spe-
cific instances where two large corporations, one com-
mercial and the other industrial, being suddenly in need
of labor, sent to Italian banks and got gangs of men.
In the one instance the commercial corporation agreed
to pay the bank $7.20 per week per man, and the men
received from the bank $5 per week each. In another
the industrial corporation paid $1.50 per day, and the

22 IMPORTED AMERICANS

men got $1.10. Three banks were concerned in the
two cases. I learned of the low wage from the men,
and in answer to my questions they told me that they
were under the control of the bank. So I made inquiry
of the two corporations and ascertained the above
facts.

It is unwise and unjust to say that all of the little Ital-
ian banks are conducted on these lines or indulge in the
following practices. There are many which are con-
ducted by honorable, trustworthy men; but the greater
number are the arbiters of the welfare of the Italian
laborer in this country. They "bureauize" him pri-
vately, as the Italian government is endeavoring and fail-
ing to do officially. The poverty-pinched Italian peasant
who is minded to come to America, earn a few hundred
dollars and return can go to a money-lender at home and
deliver himself into his hands. His. fare will be lent to
him, with other necessary money, at a usurious rate, fre-
quently with no security save that the peasant, often
unable to read or write and densely ignorant of what
awaits him, is consigned to the Italian bank in America
of which the money lender is a correspondent. When
he reaches Ellis Island he is met by his "cousin," the
bank's representative, and is duly discharged to him in
New York or shipped to him by rail. If he has any
money of his own, he deposits it in the bank; the bank
lends him more money if he needs it; the bank finds
his place to sleep and eat; the bank sees that he has a
doctor if he needs one; and in a day or two the ignorant
peasant with others of his kind is despatched to work
in the Subway, steve on the docks, excavate for
new buildings, delve in the mines, or whatever the
work may be, fulfilling the agreement which the bank
has made to deliver labor. This is an evasion of the

LIFE IN A TENEMENT 23

letter of the contract alien labor law and a flagrant vio-
lation of its spirit.

The bank, furthermore, is usually owned entirely or at
least controlled by one man. It is the laborer's address
for his mail from home. It writes his letters for him if
he is unable to write. It forwards his savings home,
minus a percentage. It holds his passport and any other
valuable papers and in every way makes itself so es-
sential to him that it has him entirely in its control.
Often he realizes that it does this for from five to thirty
per cent of his wages; more often he never knows how
much short of his full due he is getting. Worst of all
are the naturalization frauds, the wholesale political mal-
franchisements and increase of temporary immigration.
In the last-named matter the banker rarely fails to urge
the immigrant to return to Italy after he has saved two
or three hundred dollars, because he will sell the immi-
grant his ticket home, clear the scores, realize his profits
and be able to fill the place of the departing man with
one who is "greener " and yet more ignorant. When
the Italian has been here a year or two he begins to be
difficult for the banker to handle, unless he be of that
number who are born to be driven and sold like cattle.

As I have said there are many very worthy men en-
gaged in banking and agency businesses among Italians,
but there is a notable number who are born thieves and
swindlers and have records at home which prevent
their enjoyment of the balmy air of Italy for even one
brief day. This matter is not overlooked at home. A
joke in one of the Roman comic papers printed not long
ago attests that.

A cashiered army officer is pictured as meeting a de-
faulting office-holder just emerging from a term in
prison. This is the dialogue:

24 IMPORTED AMERICANS

Army Officer. — " What is the game now ? An hon-
est life?"

Late Office-holder. — "No, I think 1 shall open an
emigrant bank in New York."

Army Officer. — " Indeed ! I had thought of that
myself."

CHAPTER III

TO NAPLES IN THE STEERAGE OF THE LAHN

WHEN midsummer came it was of course still
too hot in southern Italy for us to go there
with safety, let alone comfort, and it was
becoming every day more onerous to live in the quar-
ter. New Yorkers who dwell up-town and have entire
houses, floors or apartments to themselves complain
bitterly of the heat in summer, and, if possible, escape
from the city. I have passed a whole summer in New
York up-town, but, permit me to say that it is life at a
seaside resort compared to what the people endure in
the down-town tenement districts.

I think that we could have supported the heat, but
the conglomerate of smells increased until it was over-
powering, and each night the entire quarter was in
tumult until well towards dawn. We learned then
what we came to know so well thereafter, that when
the Italian cannot sleep he fain would sing and play
lotto, seven and a half, or mora. At last, in June, my
wife became quite sick one day, and two days later we
were off on a trip by steamer to Newfoundland, Lab-
rador and Nova Scotia, returning early in August in
time to sail on the Lahn of the North German Lloyd
line.

The morning of our departure was a beautiful one,
and as we crossed by the Hoboken ferry we could
see the great German ships lying at the Hamburg-
American and North German Lloyd docks. One of

26 IMPORTED AMERICANS

them had smoke pouring from her funnels, and a "blue
peter" fluttered at her peak, — the signal that she was
about to sail.

We were dressed in the plainest and cheapest of
clothes, bought and worn previously in the quarter,
and everything we owned we had stored except what
could be got into a little $1.10 imitation-leather dress-
ing-case, with a shoulder-strap clipped into screw-eyes
in the end to make easy porterage. Over half of its
contents were photographic and stationery supplies.
Instead of a shirt I wore the usual dark jersey such as
many Italians in this country wear. Around my waist
was a plain leather belt cleverly made of two strips
between which reposed several thousand lire, easily
put in or taken out through a neatly concealed aper-
ture. Once thereafter a man handled that belt and
threw it down as not worth taking, when it had in it a
sum that would have gladdend his heart. I bore the
one piece of baggage, while my wife carried, slung
over her shoulder, the five-by-seven cartridge kodak
which was our most jealous ward, our one essential
treasure.

We had bought tickets at the Greenwich Street office
of the North German Lloyd Company, where the steer-
age traffic is handled, under the names of Berto and
Luiga Brandi and when doing so were asked our ages,
places of birth, occupation, etc. On inquiry I found
that the Italian law requires this of the ship's company,
and that these sheets are used to keep track of re-
turned emigrants and facilitate apprehension of any
men who have avoided military duty.

As we pushed our way through the crowd on the
dock, where freight and steerage baggage was being
rushed out of the way of the " first-cabiners, " who had

TO NAPLES 27

not yet begun to arrive, we were startled to find what
an enormous number of fellow passengers we
were to have compared to the steerage capacity of the
ship and the agent's forecast of the load. He had con-
jectured 350 four days before. We sailed with more
than 750 and certainly had a full house.

As we came up the gangway we were checked off
by a short, heavy-set official in a black-lustre coat and
dirty pique cap; and a white-aproned stewardess of
massive frame gave us two little red cards which read
"Good for One Ration," while a steerage steward
thrust into our hands a piece of horse-blanket goods of
very poor material and very scant in dimensions,
wrapped around a tin spoon, tin fork and tin cup.as well
as a little pan about the pork-and-bean size. As we
passed on into the crowd and into an unoccupied cor-
ner of the deck, and my wife unrolled her blanket and
saw what was inside, a certain startled, stricken look
came into her eyes. I knew that for the first time
realization of a part of what was before her had come
to her. I had often told her as nearly as I could,
speaking from my own experiences as a sailor when
studying seafaring life, of how steerage passengers
lived on emigrant ships; but now any sort of "camp-
ing-out glamour " that had hung about it for her was
dispelled, and she had a glimpse to the fore where mis-
ery, dirt and discomfort lay spread. If she was sorry
she had come, she did not say so. I will confess that
we had long since made a private bargain about the
enterprise, and the consideration was well worth the
while, so she showed no sign of wavering from her
agreement.

The deck forward was the scene of the wildest com-
motion. Many people who were returning had been

28 IMPORTED AMERICANS

accompanied to the dock by their friends, and these,
standing on shore, shouted vainly to their compatriots
aboard. The noise was too great for speech except at
close range. On every hand was piled baggage of all
shapes and sizes; but I remembered it afterwards with
envy when I saw the terrible mass of nondescript
luggage which smothered the steerage on the return
trip. The immigrant comes here with a huge pile of
bundles, wooden boxes and flimsy bags; he goes
home with good steel-framed valises and good trunks.

The chatter that prevailed about was mostly Italian,
and I found that some of the dialects spoken I could
not understand at all. I had not even encountered
them in the quarter. Then, too, there were aboard,
Greeks, Spaniards, Swiss, Germans, Macedonians,
Montenegrians, Hungarians, Jews of several sorts, Sy-
rians, etc. All spoke English in stages varying from
a complete command down to the ability to swear.
American "cuss words" are among the first things
picked up and the last forgot. Strange, is n't it ?

We had been promised that we might secure places,
— after we were on board, in a closed compartment
with four other people, a sort of superior steerage ac-
commodation to be had at the expense of $10 added to
the $35 for passage, which we had paid, and, leaving
my wife seated in a clean spot on a hatch, I scoured
the ship within the limits of the steerage to find those
compartments, but all I got was a series of round curs-
ings from the petty officers for bothering them while
they were busy. I nosed about every corner of the
ship forward, and if there were those compartments
for three married couples, which are popularly sup-
posed to exist in the emigrant quarters and had been
referred to in serious editorials in notable publications

Life on the Steerage-passengers' Deck on the Lahn

TO NAPLES 29

within the past three months as being " all that the
ship's people could be expected to give the third class
in the way of comfort and privacy," I was unable to
find them, nor did I see them or hear of them at any
time later on the Lahn or any other ship I have in-
spected.

When I came on deck a stocky Italian, well dressed
in American clothes, was holding an umbrella over my
wife, for the sun was beating down on the ship's deck,
and it was terrifically hot on board, moored as she
was to the south side of the pier. They were chat-
ting in English, and when I came up the stranger in-
troduced himself as John Tury, of Lancaster, Pa., a
peanut and fruit seller, who had been in this country
five years and was now going home to Terra Nova,
his native village in Sicily, for a brief visit. He had
with him three cousins, younger men. His English
was good though not perfect, and he refused to use
Italian either with us or any one else on shipboard ex-
cept when necessary. We sat talking for an hour or
more, and became quite good friends, while waiting
for the ship to sail and for a semblance of order to
come about.

As yet we had no sleeping quarters. There seemed
to be nothing to do but find places in the men's and
women's compartments, and they were already so well
filled when we went aboard that there was not a de-
sirable bed left. I went below, where between decks
the long, closely set double tiers of iron bunks were
ranged, and looked in vain for a bunk that was not oc-
cupied by women and children or a piece of baggage
left to signify that it had been pre-empted. There
were some empty beds in the men's compartments,
but they were badly located for light and air. There

30 IMPORTED AMERICANS

seemed to be nothing to gain by being in a hurry, and
it was a long time till evening and bedtime. I knew
there was more room on the ship, and I meant to have
some of it even if I had to leave the steerage quarters;
for our only interest in voyaging to Italy in the steer-
age was to seek information by association, whereas
when coming back to the States it would be to be
constantly with the family with which we expected to
return.

When I returned to the deck, the big liner had slid
out of the slip and was just forging her way down
stream. Back on the pier was a black group of people
waving handkerchiefs, parasols and hats. One large
group of Italians I observed, watching the serrated pro-
file of Manhattan with great interest, and I heard them
talking of it as if they had never seen it before. So I
said to one of them :

" Have you been in America and have not seen New
York?"

"No, we came to Boston and by railroad to Scran-
ton."

" Have you been at work in the mines?"

" Yes, they are just sending forty of us back home,
and one hundred more will go next month."

I knew at once that the group was one of contract
laborers who were being returned to their country,
and by questioning him further I learned that they had
been employed in the Lackawanna mines and had got
employment through an Italian "banker" in Scranton
who had sent two men to Italy in October of the year
before, and during the winter they had hired in the vicin-
ity of Potenza nearly three hundred men and despatched
them in small parties on successive steamers to Boston
in the months of March, April and May. Those who

TO NAPLES 31

were now returning were those who had been hurt,
were sick, or were dissatisfied. Ten of them had had ac-
cidents and four had lung trouble; one poor fellow, he
told me, being even then in the ship's hospital for
steerage passengers dying with consumption, the re-
sult of his two years' work under ground.

The steerage passengers are supposed to form them-
selves into groups of six, and one man of the six is the
one to receive the food as it is ladled out of huge tanks
on deck by the steerage stewards; but not having had
time to get properly assorted, dinner was now served
to the steerage on a basis of "every man look out for
his own."

I took our two tin pans and the tin cups, and plunged
into the crush waiting to pass in line down the alley
which was made by the tanks and baskets of food,
ranged on the deck forward, and emerged in half an
hour with two messes of macaroni and meat, two tin
cups of highly acid and alcoholic wine and a cap full of
hot potatoes.

As my wife looked the fare over when I brought it
to her as she squatted in a nook sheltered from the
sun, her lips trembled and she looked away towards
Staten Island, then dropping into dim distance, as if
wishing that she could by some magic word trans-
port herself back to home-land soil once more. But in
an instant her courage forced a smile, and we closed
our eyes and ate and drank. It did not taste so bad,
after all, but it was the look of it ! And the way the
women and children about us spilled it around on
the deck and on themselves !

After we had eaten what little we might, we ensconced
ourselves in a bit of shade and watched the crowd
about. Every moment that passed, every bit of con-

32 IMPORTED AMERICANS

versation we caught, every small incident that oc-
curred, showed us that for months we had been moving
on a false plane, that just at that time when we thought
ourselves in the genuine atmosphere of the life of the
Italian immigrant in the New World, we were merely
in that false temporizing atmosphere which he creates
for himself and fellows, and from which he emerges
only when he has become Americanized. In a few
minutes we understood that the greater portion of the
conditions, habits and operations which we had ob-
served grew out of a feeling among them that they
were merely temporizing here; that they had come to
America to make a few hundred dollars to send or take
back to Italy; and that it did not make much difference
what they ate, wore or did, just so long as they got the
money and got back. We could see plainly why it
was that they had not risen above that state until they
had been attracted and drawn into the real American
life about them and had decided to remain. Here were
hundreds of Italians just such as those who had been
our household neighbors, but they were now a different
people. They spoke freely, they bore themselves dif-
ferently. There was a new certainty and boldness in
their manner, for they were free and cut off from all
things American, and, without imperilling a single inter-
est, could return to everything that was Italian. Sepa-
rated from its opportunities for betterment, their state
in this country is inferior to that at home. This I can
say conscientiously after long and careful observation.
We became acquainted with a woman who sat near
us and who had a very pretty little girl. This woman
said she came from Pittsburg, having been born of Italian
parents in this country when the first Italians came
from the north of Italy about twenty-five years ago.

TO NAPLES 33

She had married an Italian who had emigrated more re-
cently, and now they were going home for a visit. She
expressed intense disgust at the manner in which about
one third of the women conducted themselves and al-
lowed their children to behave. These women were
the ones who made the noise, who scattered the filth,
who sprawled about on deck and whose children,
though on board but a few hours as yet, were sights to
behold from being allowed to play in the scuppers
where the refuse from dinner had collected in heaps
purpled with the wasted wine.

From her we learned that her husband had been com-
missioned by a contractor in Pittsburg to go into the
Italian provinces of Austria, — by which is meant the
Austrian possession immediately around the head of the
Adriatic, where the stock is Italian, — and engage two
hundred good stonemasons, two hundred good carpen-
ters, and an indefinite number of unskilled laborers.
These people were to be put in touch with sub-agents of
lines sailing from Hamburg, Fiume and Bremen, and
these agents were to be accountable for these contract
laborers being got safely into the United States. This
woman informed us that many of her neighbors in
Pittsburg had come into the United States as contract
laborers, and held the law in great contempt, as it was
merely a matter of being sufficiently instructed and pre-
pared, and no official at Boston or Ellis Island could tell
the difference.

We had been seated there a little while when there
came by a sailor whom I had known in Hamburg some
years before, and when I stepped aside to talk with
him he was greatly surprised but remembered me, and
we talked of many things which do not pertain to this
consideration, save that just before he left I told him

34 IMPORTED AMERICANS

that we were on the lookout for the best sleeping and
eating accommodations we could get in the steerage,
and he answered, laughingly, that it was easy enough
to get a good place and good things to eat — if I had
money. I signified that I had.

He said he would send me a man who would be the
person with whom to dicker. When he was gone, I
sat down to wait. In about an hour I saw a tall, well-
built man in ship's working rig, neither a sailor nor a
steward, though moving about the steerage apparently
looking for some one ; so I moved his way, and when he
saw me he sidled up cautiously, glancing up at the
bridge, the forward end of the boat and the hurricane
deck to see who might be observing. I spoke to him
in German; but he replied in English and said we had
better talk English, as it was the language that was safe
from eavesdroppers.

He said he would sell us good beds for $10 each, and
we could buy food as we wished it. The food would
be furnished by the first-cabin cook and would be sav-
ings from the galley. I demanded to see the beds first,
and he led the way below. He took us to the entrance
to the steerage compartments nearest amidships, where
they opened into a little alleyway, at one end of which
was one of the public bars for the sale of beer to those
Italians, Jews, etc., who have learned to drink beer in-
stead of wine. Beside the companionway which led
down to the compartments for third-class passengers
was a narrow one marked "Hospital." It led down
past the steerage dispensary and to the two rooms ap-
portioned for female sick. A narrow alleyway passed
transversely to the other side of the ship, where there
were two rooms for the male sick. My conductor was
the hospital steward, and his offer to us was a bunk

TO NAPLES 35

each in the hospital wards, to which we could come at
night as if we were patients. I could not see how it
was safe to pay the money in advance, and then be
ousted by the ship's doctor the first time he made
his rounds. So this hospital steward, who was called
Otho, surprised me by summoning the ship's doctor, a
young German with a fringe of flaxen beard and bulg-
ing eyes, and allowing him to reassure me. It was all
right. He got his share of the money from the rental
of the bunks. All of them expressed a great fear and
dread of the Italian doctor, the naval surgeon put on
each emigrant ship by the Italian government.

In brief, as the beds were clean, the situation inter-
esting and the hospital wards not very crowded, we
accepted, and whenever the food on deck was not to
our liking we could get an abundance from the hospital.
It was rather wearisome, the last few days, though.
Duck and chicken for every meal!

In my room there were two others who were paying
rent for beds. One was a quaint old fellow from
Tuckahoe, where he kept a saloon. He was on his way
home for the fourth time. He wore a knit worsted
green and yellow skull-cap day and night. It had a
long yellow tassel on it, and some nights the tassel
would get in his mouth and interfere with his slumbers
— and mine. The second room had but one patient in
it, one of the contract laborers from Scranton who was
dying with consumption and prayed all day long for a
sufficient lease of life to see the Bay of Naples, when
he felt sure he would begin to get well at once. In
three years he had saved and sent home $820, which
made his wife and family comparatively independent.
He told me one day that even if he died as the result of
his voluntary slavery in the mines he felt sufficiently

36 IMPORTED AMERICANS

repaid. I am glad to say that at least he reached home
alive.

Late that afternoon we ran rapidly into murky
weather and before long encountered a stiff gale, for
August. It lasted all night and all the next day. I have
been on ships steadier than the Lahn, and this gale took
her nearly on the beam. The seasickness in the steer-
age was nothing short of frightful. Fortunately the
people had had very little to eat — few of them much
breakfast on sailing-day and very few any supper — so
the most undesirable feature of a seasick crowd was
limited. Also many of the third-class passengers had
profited by the experiences of former voyages, and were
able to take care of themselves and make less bother
for their neighbors. Nevertheless, the compartments,
in which the people were compelled to stay by reason
of the deck weather, were in a state in describing
which no good purpose is served. The steerage
stewards were constantly busy with hose, sand
buckets, brooms, etc.

Not only were we seeking general information, but
we were hoping to get trace of some southern Italian
family about to emigrate, in order to make them, as
planned, the central feature of our analytical study of
particular experiences; so, as the days went by, I in-
quired of each new person with whom I fell into con-
versation if he knew of such a family. Nearly every
other man was either going over to get a wife for him-
self or already had a family in Italy and expected to re-
turn in October, or, if not then, in the following May.
In a short time we had twenty families under consid-
eration, but none of them seemed to be exactly typical;
they were all too small, too large, too rich or from
provinces that sent few emigrants.

TO NAPLES 37

There was a group of eight Greeks aboard who had
been denied admission to the United States and were
part of twenty-two men, women and children of
mix-ed races who had arrived in New York on the Lahn
and other North German Lloyd ships and were being
returned by the company. The leader of the group
was a huge fellow with very curly hair and beard who
rejoiced in the name of Garareikophalous, and the third
day 1 had a long chat with him with the aid of an in-
terpreter from among our fellow passengers.

He said that all Greece was stirred up over the mat-
ter of emigration, and that in five years' time the num-
ber of Greeks coming to the United States would have
increased a thousand per cent. The military duties in
the kingdom were too onerous to be borne, and the
Greeks already in the United States were prospering to
such an extent that every remittance they made home
fired the zeal of the people to follow after them. In
nearly every village the candy-makers' shops were
educating twice the usual number of apprentices, be-
cause the first emigrants had been candy-makers and
they had established a foothold in the confectionery
business and then sent for their candy-making relatives,
which had caused a shortage in confectioners in
Greece and in turn had created the impression that to
get on best in America a Greek should be a candy-
maker. Therefore every father who desired that his
sons should go to America and send him enough
money home to make him a rich man among his
neighbors, apprenticed them to candy-making and
after two years shipped them to New York. Some
of the venturesome ones had branched out in the dried-
fruit and olive-oil business, and he had heard they were
doing very well. The result would be that as the

38 IMPORTED AMERICANS

various natural industries of Greece were taken up in
America, and opportunities for labor and business of-
fered, the emigration would swell to comparatively
huge proportions.

A feature which he mentioned and on which I ques-
tioned him exhaustively was the advertising done by
the steamship companies. He had some of the ad-
vertisements in his pockets, and some others he got
from the members of his party. These he translated
to the interpreter, who gave me a rough idea of what
they were. 1 found they were not issued by the
steamship companies but by sub-agents in Vienna,
Bremen, Hamburg, Berlin, Naples, etc., and were of a
very alluring sort. Two of them were poems expati-
ating on the beauties and wealth of America, and one
was a clipping from a Greek paper supposed to be
printed in New York, which related how a poor boy
from Thessaly had gone to Cincinnati and opened a
little candy store. He had broadened his business to
a factory, and now had headquarters of four factories
in New York, and had property to the extent of a
million and a half drachmae, or about $200,000, to show
for eight years' work.

Garareikophalous was very proud of the fact that he
and his party had not been deceived by the sub-agents
into going to America by the northern route. He
averred that every effort is made by the sub-agents all
through his country to get the emigrants to go over-
land to the German or French ports and take ship
there instead of shipping at Naples or other Mediter-
ranean ports.

I was unable to understand this action of the sub-
agents until I had the light of later investigation upon
it, when I found that it is a rule of the agents at the

Preparing to Serve a Meal on the Labn from the Food-tanks
and Bread-baskets

TO NAPLES 39

ports of embarkation never to allow an emigrant who
has been denied admission to the United States to re-
turn to his native village if business is anything less
than rushing from that section, for the reason that one
emigrant who has failed to enter the United States can
keep three hundred more from trying it. If the emi-
grant were returned to a southern port, the chances of
his reaching home would be greatly increased. Emi-
grants returned to German and French ports are often
reshipped to South Africa, South America and Mexico.
Furthermore, when they are of the sort that needs
coaching and schooling, in order that they shall not
make the wrong answers at Ellis Island, the journey
across the continent is used as an educational process
in which they are carefully taught to dissemble. If
there are members of the family who are physically
unfit to be sent to Ellis Island, the sub-agents persuade
the family to separate at the port of embarkation, and
the diseased and deformed ones are sent across the
channel into England and dumped in the charitable
institutions. Sometimes they are sent from England,
perhaps even from the port of embarkation, to Can-
ada. The Hamburg-American line carries a notoriously
bad lot of emigrants into Halifax. This feature I had
investigated to my complete satisfaction in July.

More information that was decidedly to the point, I
received from two Jews who were returning to as-
semble a large party of former neighbors and bring
them to America, to sell off a quantity of property
and in general readjust matters in a town not far from
Odessa, in behalf of a coterie of relatives whom they
had brought to America previously. Both had lived
in Hungary and had traveled all through the districts
from which comes the poor Jew of the South. They

40 IMPORTED AMERICANS

were going to Naples, by rail to Brindisi, then to Alex-
andria and Smyrna, and would go north from Con-
stantinople. I will confess that it was not easy to
elicit information from them, and very indirect pro-
cesses were necessary ; but here are some of the things
learned.

Among Russians as well as Jews in Russia the limi-
tations of the American immigration laws are very
well known indeed by the priests, school-teachers, of-
ficials and others; and when a family desires to emi-
grate it begins by paying a weekly stipend to some
person in this class, who puts them through a course
of instruction as to how to carry money, answer
questions, conceal diseases, etc. When the family
starts it is met at all important stations by a Jewish
committee and passed on. An ignorant Jew pos-
sessed of some wealth is almost certain to lose much
of it at the hands of unscrupulous Jews who infest
principal stations, border towns, etc. There have
been cases where poor families even lost their little all
to these harpies, ending by becoming charitable
charges in England or Belgium. In many cases the
family is part of a large group under the direct charge
of a runner from some sub-agent's office, but this is
usually the case when the people are very poor and
obviously diseased. Groups like this are not delivered
to the steamship agents at German and French ports,
but are sent to a place called the Shelter for Poor Jews
which has been established in London, and they are
kept there many weeks if necessary, and then sent
either to New York, Boston, Halifax or Montreal. Cases
of trachoma are treated in this shelter, in great numbers,
until the emigrant is ready to pass inspection. Those
cases which are regarded as hopeless are sent to Ca-

TO NAPLES 41

nadian towns in care of Jewish societies and are smug-
gled across the border gradually.

These men had a quantity of letters and credentials
signed by various steamship representatives, and I was
exceedingly sorry that I could not know whether they
were bound on a mission that was much more exten-
sive and nefarious than the plans which they avowed
to me.

One fine morning we sighted the Azores and passed
close by the shore of St. Michaels, and the second day
thereafter we arrived at Gibraltar. Third-class pas-
sengers were not encouraged to go ashore, but I made
a little arrangement with the man at the plank; and my
wife, John Tury, the Lancaster peanut-seller, and I
went ashore in the dusk of the evening. The steamer
would not leave till after midnight. As we walked
along the streets, Tury said to me:

" I suppose if we were going to be here for a day,
we might take the train over to London ?"

"To London! Why, what do you mean?" I ex-
claimed.

"Why, I have heard England is a very small place,
and it cannot be far from here to London."

Then I realized that he thought Gibraltar was the
southern end of England, and I was surprised to learn
later how many Italians who have voyaged by Gibral-
tar more than once are of the same impression. I
have heard some argue for it stoutly.

Just the day before we reached Naples, when there
was great happiness and rejoicing on every hand, I ob-
served a well-built young Italian with heavy black hair
and moustache, a handsome fellow of twenty-five,
come up from below with his mandolin. With him
was an older man with a guitar. In a few minutes

42 IMPORTED AMERICANS

there was a little band of four musicians gathered on
the shady side of the ship at the foot of the compan-
ion-way to the hurricane deck. They were playing an
American two-step, and had a well-pleased crowd
about them. On the lapel of the mandolin-player I
observed a button of the Foresters. They had begun
on the second number of their impromptu concert,
when the second officer piped from the bridge, a deck
hand went up and came down in a minute with this
mandate:

"You must stop playing; the captain wants to
sleep."

Jeers and shouts of scorn and anger rose on every
hand, and I observed that the leaders in this expression
were those men whom I knew to be American citizens
or Italians, Jews or Greeks of some length of residence
in the United States.

As the young mandolin-player walked away, 1
stopped him and spoke to him in English, asking him
if he was a Forester. He told me he was and that
he belonged to a lodge in Stonington, Conn., and, hav-
ing been in America five years, was now going home
" for the women folks."

In brief, I found in him and his family the ideal
group for which we had been looking. He was suffi-
ciently Americanized to appreciate the object of our
investigations, and we speedily became good friends.

His name is Antonio Squadrito, and he had with him
his father, Giovanni. Five years before, he had left
his native Sicilian village, Gualtieri-Sicamino, as one of
the first to depart for America from all that country.
He had done so because he had his choice between
going into the Carabineers, or rural police, and taking
up a trade. He had told his father that if he would

TO NAPLES 43

help him borrow the money he would go to America.
This was done, though the neighbors all prophesied
disaster and misfortune "in that strange wild land."

He landed at the Battery from the Kaiser Friedrich,
being " recommended " to a distant relative from a
northern province who was already in New York; and
the first work he got was in the quarries of Westerly,
R. 1., where he worked for three months at $i. 10 per
day. He played the mandolin even then with fair
skill, and made friends with an Italian who had a bar-
ber shop in Stonington. Antonio went there to work,
and as he saved his money he sent back, little by little,
enough to pay off his debt at home, and the remainder
his boss " borrowed" from him. Some domestic re-
lations of the boss caused him to desire to sell out, and
one day he came to Antonio and told him he must buy
his barber shop or he would not get back the borrowed
money. Antonio protested that he could not speak
enough English to run the business, but the boss in-
sisted, and in the end Antonio found himself possessed
of the shop and a new debt of $100 which he had got
as a loan from a man who had taken an interest in him.

The shop prospered. Antonio sent over for his
brother Giuseppe to come over and help him. Giu-
seppe is older and had married a year before, and his
wife Camela had presented him with a pretty little
girl baby whom they had named Caterina after her
grandmother Squadrito. The next year the shop was
doing so well that Carlino, the brother next younger
than Antonio, was sent for; and the next year Tom-
masso, a still younger brother, and Giovanni the father
were brought over. The father worked at carpenter-
ing and coopering in Stonington, making as much as
$1.80 per day; but he could not learn the language, and

44 IMPORTED AMERICANS

when I met him his English was limited to " All right!"
" Fine day!" " Yes, sir!" and "cuss words."

In the last year before our meeting Antonio had
married the widow of a whaling-captain of the town,
who had been left property by her husband estimated
roundly at $60,000. By this time Antonio had made
in his barber shop and cigar store and by furnishing
music for dances, etc., $8,000, and had sent home five
or ten dollars each month. A nice little acre or two of
garden land had been bought east of the village, and of
this Antonio was very proud, as in his country none
but the fairly well-to-do owns land.

Now he was going home to get a party of the fam-
ily, of cousins and neighbors, and he expected to re-
turn in two or three months. That suited the limits
of our time, and the location of the family in one of
the hotbeds of emigration was most pleasing; so we
were delighted when he cordially invited us to go
home with him. We explained that we wished to
make a sort of general study of the country as it re-
lated to the immigration question, before we took up
the subject in particular, and he confided that his prin-
cipal reason for wishing to have us visit him in Gual-
tieri was to show the people there that all the won-
derful stories they had been hearing about him were
true in the main. He carried no proof except banking
papers, and he was anxious about " what the home
folks might think." I often think of how much of
the strenuous endeavor in all lines in this world is to
"impress the home folks." How many men and
women have been disappointed when they went out
into the world and did something that was absolutely
beyond the comprehension — even belief, perhaps — of
the simple-minded "folks at home."

TO NAPLES 45

The next day, late in the morning, signs began to
show in the east that we were nearing the shores of
Italy, and late that afternoon the Lahn forged into a
berth close to the naval sea wall before the beautiful
city of Naples.

As we were leaving the ship we saw Carabineers at
the gangways arresting several men who had been in
the steerage with us. I made inquiry, and was in-
formed that the men arrested had left Italy to avoid
military duty, and they had been kept track of. When
they sailed home, the Italian authorities in New York
had notified the questor, or chief of police, at Naples.

As the tender which took us ashore steamed away
from the Lahn, we got a fine view of the ship and its
surroundings. It was encompassed on every hand by
bumboat-men selling the sweet fruits of Italy, for which
her sons and daughters had hungered and thirsted so
long. Just outside of the ring of bumboat-men were
the twoscore or more boats of the runners for
emigrant lodging-houses. These men would get the
eye of a returned emigrant on board and would bar-
gain with him for a room, then take him off with his
baggage. A police official in plain clothes who was
aboard the tender told me that among the curses of
the city are the practices in these lodging-houses,
where every sort of evil element congregates to prey
on the simple-minded countryman who has been to
America for two or three years, toiled hard for the
few hundred dollars he is bringing back, and yet has
not wit enough to keep the thieves of Naples from
getting all or a portion of it. However, the returned
emigrants are not to be condemned for their witless-
ness. I flatter myself that I know a thing or two, and
yet I found myself on the constant qui vive to keep

46 IMPORTED AMERICANS

from being "done" in Naples, and even my great
vigilance did not save me once or twice. Dishonesty
is part of the air in Naples, just as is the smell that is
famous.

CHAPTER IV

CONDITIONS IN THE NEAPOLITAN ZONE

IT is a painful fact, but the average American's
conception of Italian immigration is that the
majority of the Italians come from " down in the
Boot," and that they are all bad and undesirable. It
is the usual thing to regard all southern Italians as
unworthy of Americanism. One sees it constantly in
public print or finds it in private discourse. And the
phrase about the Boot is one which has been bruited
around again and again from official report to alarmist
editorial, and back to classical reference which was its
origin. I have met many people who are not aware
that the Sicilians, for instance, do not come from
"down in the Boot." These ideas all mate nicely
with the one which attributes to every Italian the pos-
session of a stiletto up his sleeve and an ever-ready
hand to use it.

The poor southern Italians are the object of con-
stant attack by the American public, of bitter contempt
from the more fortunate people of the northern
provinces, and of ceaseless worriment from the gentle-
men legislators of the kingdom. Italia Meridionale is
in a miserable condition compared with the north,
and the people are ignorant, and the percentage of
illiteracy is appalling; but, nevertheless, they are strong
in body, steadfast in mind, willing of spirit and at all
times thrifty; so that, speaking from an immigratory
standpoint, I am convinced, after a survey of the entire
experiment, that they are a very good sort of raw

48 IMPORTED AMERICANS

material and their immigration should be encouraged,
if the rottenness that corrupts them after they are here
— as a drop of poison can turn the blood of an entire
body to virus — could be cut out before they start.

Poverty, ignorance and hot blood have fostered
among them crime, treachery and immorality, and the
larger towns have sufficed to gather these into fester-
ing clusters, leaving the countryside comparatively
pure. The farmer-folk and the villagers are not
criminal, dishonest or vicious; but when, in the
process of emigration, nine of them are thrown with
that one tenth man who is so, he leads them into
ways that are not straight and paths that are turned,
and in many, many instances organizes a band which
holds a large coterie of families almost entirely in its
power. This it can do by superior intelligence,
boldness, etc., and the fact that the Italians in America
are in a strange land, are "greenhorns," as they say
among themselves, lays them wide open to such
invidious influences. If that one man or woman out
of every ten who is vicious could be prevented from
sailing, a few years would see Italian names almost en-
tirely effaced from the criminal news and the court and
prison records. If the system of social poisoning of
the densely populated immigrant quarters is not des-
troyed, it will ultimately prove a menace to all law
and order in the large cities or industrial districts
populous with immigrants.

Before we went to Sicily to study the peculiar con-
ditions surrounding the Squadrito family and their
neighbors, we took up the general investigation
through the country south of Rome, gathering what
we could by going from town to town, asking ques-
tions, asking questions, always asking questions.

THE NEAPOLITAN ZONE 49

Much was to be learned from watching even the
tiniest things in the newspapers and from observ-
ing the people themselves as they passed about
the most inconsequential pursuits of their daily ex-
istence.

To give the matter a topical consideration, it
separates itself naturally into five divisions, which are
semi-geographical merely for convenience, as it would
be erroneous indeed to consider each province accord-
ing to its political boundaries: The Zone of Naples,
the Zone of Rome, the Provinces of the Heel, the
Provinces of the Toe and Sicily. In those portions
of the following consideration topicalized as zones,
the distinctions are made, because the regions dealt
with have all their general social conditions very
largely shaped by the subtle cumulative influence of
the life in the two great cities, Rome and Naples. It is
possible that few Italians are aware of the differences,
but they are palpable to an outsider immediately.
Every village that is within touch of either the Italian
capital or the most important port and city partakes of
the markedly contradistinct life of the two. If Naples
is correctly called a City of Thieves, then is Rome
equally well named a City of Institutions, and there is
the difference. Abruzzi, Molise and Puglie (Apulia),
having greater extents of plain suited to agriculture
than any of the other southern provinces and being
farther from the emigration centres on the west side
of the peninsula, form a group by themselves under
the title Provinces of the Heel. Basilicata (Potenza)
and Calabria, being nearly uniformly mountainous even
out to the sea line and having the most potent influ-
ences at work to urge emigration, are considered under
Provinces of the Toe; while, as for conditions in Sicily,

50 IMPORTED AMERICANS

they are best told in connection with our own ex-
periences there with the people of Gualtieri-Sicamino
and other towns.

As for general comparative conditions of educa-
tion, amount of emigration and a very interesting side-
light on the Italian administrative attitude towards
emigration, I give a translation of an article which ap-
peared some months since in // Progresso Italo-Amer-
icano, of New York, a newspaper of importance, and
one which is usually able to reflect the Italian govern-
ment's position in anything that pertains to social and
educational subjects. The article, which is editorial,
reads :

"EMIGRATION AND EDUCATION

" The Bureau of Education in Rome has recently
received the following telegram from Inspector Adolfo
Rossi, who is at present in South Africa.

" ' According to the decree already published in the
Official Gazette, the landing of illiterate immigrants at
Cape Town shall be prohibited.'

"South Africa now follows Australia and British
Columbia, and before long the United States will
emulate their example.

" The law already approved by the House of Repre-
sentatives is now before the Senate, being favorably
reported by the Senate Committee, and from the last
message of President Roosevelt (of which the readers
of // Progresso are not ignorant) it is evident it will
have all the support of the Presidential power. What
will then become of our emigration, and particularly
that from the southern provinces ? This has been a
frequent question, and it is now becoming acute. A
comparison between the grand total of permanent
emigration from the Neapolitan provinces for the first
six months of the year, and the percentage of illiteracy
shown by the last compulsory enrollment of troops is
necessary, in order to comprehend the terrible menace

Peasant Types

THE NEAPOLITAN ZONE 51

hanging over those regions, and the duties devolving
upon the officials directing affairs.

"The following tables give the statistics referred to:

Emigration for Six Months Illiteracy

Abruzzi 28,412 49-59 per cent.

Campania 41,066 44.05 " "

Apulia 8,434 53-<>5 " "

Basilicata 7,840 S2-I3 " "

Calabria 21,262 55.02 " "

" During the first ten months of 1902 there emigrated
from Naples to the United States 145,629, of which
number more than eighty-eight per cent were over
ten years of age.

" Given the application of the law presented to Con-
gress at Washington by the Hon. Mr. Shattuc, with
amendments of the Hon. Mr. Underwood, about 70,000
persons from the Neapolitan provinces alone would
have been returned from the American ports during
the period mentioned. The following extract is taken
from the report of the Senate Committee:

" ' While we are spending millions to eradicate from
our country the evil of illiteracy, we are opening our
doors to illiterate men of all nations. One may have
the opinion that education is not a guaranty of char-
acter, any more than the want of education may be of
dishonesty, but it is undoubted that education consti-
tutes the fundamental basis of any moral and
intellectual progress.'

"The last message of the President of the United
States contains the following:

" ' The second object of an immigration law should
be that of ascertaining, by means of an accurate ex-
amination and not one simply relative to illiteracy,
whether the immigrant has the intellectual capacity of
being able to act healthfully and judiciously as an
American citizen.'

"In view of such danger, what action remains to be
taken ? It is illusory to hope that the action of our
diplomacy (no matter what eminent statesmen we
may have) can succeed in preventing the enactment of

52 IMPORTED AMERICANS

the law in America, any more than it could have pre-
vented such action in Australia, British Columbia or
Cape Colony.

"We can only endeavor to maintain for as long as
possible the openings which we at present have for
our emigration, and to endeavor to acquire new ones,
as, for instance, the Transvaal mines. A strong
economic crisis continues in the Argentine Republic,
and at present immigration is necessarily suspended.
In Brazil, where there is still much field for opportu-
nities, it would be heartless to encourage our emigrants
and afterwards see them in the 'fazendas,' treated
with inhumanity and oppression, without being able
to render them any effectual protection.

"On the other hand it is a duty of the Italian state
energetically to provide for the education of the south-
ern proletarian masses, which the local administrations
cannot do, deprived as they are of resources and op-
pressed by dents and taxation. In the south it is the
duty of the State to conduct, at least in the minor
communities, the elementary education, causing the
communities to contribute only in accordance with
their means, thereby avoiding an unnecessary ag-
gravation of their present condition. As stated by the
Honorable Sonnino in his speech in Maddaloni Hall,
Naples, modern Italy has so far deplorably failed in
the first of its duties to civilization: that of giving
primary education to the poor masses of its most un-
fortunate provinces.

"It is now time to resolve for energetic action, in
order to eradicate from one-half the kingdom of
Italy the stigma of being the leading nation of Chris-
tian Europe in illiteracy. Considerations of prudence
as well as humanity advise us to take such a step."

In a word, nearly half of the people are unable to
read and write in Italia Meridionale, because the com-
munes are too poor to pay the expenses of maintain-
ing schools except in the larger towns and cities. The
attitude of the Italian government is very nicely shown

THE NEAPOLITAN ZONE 53

also. It looks on emigration as the only safety-valve
for the districts which are over-populated, and recent
years have proved that an immense improvement al-
ways follows in any village when the proportion of its
emigration rises above ten per cent. The reason is that
the Italians in America, South America, South Africa and
Australia save enough money to send home enormous
sums to their relatives, with the result that in Basilicata,
for instance, which has been heavily drained by
emigration, there are entire communities in a flourishing
condition solely on the savings of their emigrants.
By most careful estimates, made by comparison of
consular reports with Italo-American banking state-
ments, the Italian money post, and the statistics of the
Italian Bureau of Emigration, I have concluded that
in the year 1902 between $62,000,000 and $70,000,-
ooo was sent home to Italy from the United States
alone. In the year 1903 between $57,000,000 and
$63,000,000 was the estimated amount.

The decrease is to be accounted for by the great
increase in the number coming over to join those in
the United States who had been sending them money.
A great difficulty that blocks accuracy in these things
is the concealment of funds by returning emigrants
and by recipients of money in Italy. I found a family
in Caivano, near Naples, for instance, who received
through a cousin who returned to Italy on the Lahn,
at the same time with us, $3,500, jointly sent by a
father and three sons working in the mills in Birming-
ham, Ala. Only by chance did I learn of it, and then
they besought me to keep their secret, fearing that
" the King would get it." When the Italian pays his
two or three per cent to the government he says, "it
has gone to the King." H. J. W. Dam's "The Tax

54 IMPORTED AMERICANS

on Moustaches" very nicely touches up this matter of
national taxes in Italy. 1 know personally of a large
number of instances of returning emigrants carrying
large sums of money with them, and I have the state-
ments of scores of money-changers to whom American
dollars are sold ; so that I feel justified in saying that a very
large portion of the emigrant savings goes home clan-
destinely and is never caught in the government net,
yet blessed is the lot of the tax-collector in a village
which has twenty or more per cent of its native-born
in America. His lot is an easy one compared with the
corresponding official in a village of small emigration.

Particularly as to conditions in the zone of Neapolitan
influence, emigration is the most important feature of
life there to-day, for the reason that the emigration from
Campania has been and is enormous, and that, should
Naples suddenly cease to be the greatest of all ports of
embarkation, a financial paralysis would strike the city
and province.

Over large districts, the vital arteries of which are
the river valleys of the Volturno and Garigliano and
the country back from the Gulf of Naples and the Bay
of Salerno, the influence of Naples obtains, and its
dominant tone, as has been said, is dishonesty.
Naturally, since Naples is the metropolis of the region,
the Neapolitan point of view is the one emulated, and
though I have seen many types of lying, lazy, morally
oblique peoples, I have never dwelt among any where
a constant exercise of one's vigilance on the defensive
was so absolutely necessary.

A rather good story which illustrates the propensities
of the Neapolitans was told me by an Englishman
whom I met in Caserta. According to his relation, a
German Jew, a Scotchman and a Connecticut Yankee

THE NEAPOLITAN ZONE 55

formed a company for the exportation of wine from
Naples and went there to set up business. After being
in the city several days, and having a few business
transactions with the Neapolitans, the Yankee said to
his partners:

"Well, boys, we had better settle down and live
here for about ten years until we learn a few tricks and
then start business, or we had better give these chaps
all we have at once and save them the trouble of taking
it away from us."

From Frosinone south to the valley of the Sele and
back as far as Ariano we found even the simple-
minded peasants to have that touch of Neapolitanism,
which is, to say the least, an undesirable characteristic.
In the city itself it is so serious that not many years
since the organized ruffians of the Cammora, recruited
from all stations of society, were a power of terror,
and since then men more polite, but just as criminal,
bankrupted the city and brought general conditions to
such a pass that the national government was forced
to step in and take control till municipal and provincial
affairs could be put on an honest and paying basis.
The people are more noisy, more gross in their habits,
and more irresponsible in their conduct than any class
in any part of Italy. Constant change of government
in the past, lack of things of an institutional nature
and the focusing of all the bad in the south of Italy
may have had the degenerating effect; but, whatever
the cause, the effect exists, and the social virus seems
to have poisoned many a man I know who, but for
his brief stays in Naples, would be a very decent
citizen, either in his native town, in other provinces, or
in his new home in America. The bad Italians in the
United States are in clusters, and the heads of the

56 IMPORTED AMERICANS

majority of these groups are men trained in theft,
trickery and crime in the excellent schools of Naples
and Palermo.

In the city there are few factories, though the gov-
ernment is bringing every influence to bear to promote
industries in Naples, and under the new municipal
plan a large tract of the side of the city that lies
towards Vesuvius is arranged for factory sites; but
there are three important things lacking: raw material,
skilled labor and confident capital. Even the excellent
street-car system is controlled by Belgians. The north
of Italy continues to be the industrial section. The
business that emigration engenders is first in im-
portance. Vesuvius, Pompeii, the Bay and the climate
form the next important asset, and the exportation of
agricultural products and wholesale business of all
sorts the third. Two hundred thousand people in the
city live on so little a year that the statement of the
amount would sound ridiculous.

We traversed the country of the arbitrarily indicated
zone in the time of the full harvest, when the bits of plain
on which rows of trees, themselves loaded with fruit,
were seen to be the supports of miles of running vines
bearing great bunches of grapes, heavily covered with
dust. In every village were to be seen the hemp
workers, where the long stripped stalks were piled up
in bound bundles waiting to be laid in the mangling
machines, operated as a rule by women and hand-
mangled. On carefully brushed stone squares men,
women and children were threshing beans and peas.
Before every door were flat shallow troughs in which
figs or fruit of some sort were drying. On the house-
tops the tomatoes were being converted into a dark
red mash, which is called pomidoro and is used to

Mangling Hemp

THE NEAPOLITAN ZONE 57

make the delicious sauces with which macaroni is
dressed. Long-horned oxen or patient donkeys, with
now and then an undersized horse, drew along the
dusty highways carts loaded with casks made ready for
wine, bundles of hemp stalks or shocks of wheat. In
every village were to be seen the several offices of the
steamship companies' sub-agents. The countryside
simply teemed with life. There was never a spot
where one might stand and, though there was no one
in sight, not hear voices all about. In nearly every
group of people was to be seen one or more who bore
the signs of recent return from America or indications
of near departure. Over everything lay the white dust
from the dry plains and slopes, and the sun beat down
with distracting fervor.

It did not seem to me that in the country districts of
the Neapolitan zone the Church exercised quite the
influence for good or evil in the material affairs of the
people that it does elsewhere in Italia Meridionale, and
it was noticeable that the people had stronger commer-
cial instincts, being more inclined to buy and sell if
given the opportunity. That finds an expression in
America in this way. So many of the lace-workers,
barrow-men, coal, wood and ice men are Neapolitans,
or are from the villages in the Neapolitan zone. But,
in the social organization of the countryside everything
led to the impression that, as each child grew up, his or
her elders forced a place in the already existing throng
for him or her, a place wherein a bit to eat and a scrap
to wear might be won, and above that place the child
could scarcely hope to rise, inasmuch as it was difficult
to maintain the foothold, let alone improve it. Those
who were unfit for the struggle became beggars and
wanderers, not paupers in the Italian sense, for the Ital-

58 IMPORTED AMERICANS

ian pauper is a person not only penniless, homeless and
friendless, but physically incapable of taking any care
of himself whatever. The inmates of the Reclusario
of Naples are the most shocking lot of human wrecks
I have ever beheld aggregated.

If a family or group of families is suddenly deprived
of the source from which it has been eking a
slender livelihood, the desperation to which it is
driven is well instanced by the terrible tragedy at Torre-
Annunziata. Immediately on hearing of the first out-
break there, I took up the investigation, and in brief this
is the story of the occurrence.

It was merely one of those risings of the common
people which occur every now and then, and in which
they uniformly get the worst of it. It seems that the
estate owned by the Ferroni Corporation had for fifteen
years been allowing the farmers about Sarno, Castel-
lamare-Torre-Annunziata, to have cheaply certain waste
materials for fertilizing their farms. These were sud-
denly cut off, and the tenants demanded the immediate
delivery of the manure for their common use, but to
their demand no attention was paid.

This led to a discontent, which it is claimed was fos-
tered by the local Chamber of Labor, and they were
exhorted by a Socialist by the name of Vincenzo Pre-
senzano with the result that on the 3ist of August over
two hundred of them, armed with sticks, forks, spades
and stones, gathered on the property of one Gennaro
Salto and stopped the carts coming from the estate with
the material, and, the high iron bridge over the River
Sarno being close at hand, they dumped the entire out-
fit into the deeps.

Five municipal guards and two city officials inter-
vened in an endeavor to maintain order; but by this

THE NEAPOLITAN ZONE 59

time the crowd had grown to over five hundred, and,
after securing information for making arrests, they re-
tired.

In a little while there arrived a small force of Cara-
bineers, city and municipal guards, and they were so out-
numbered by the rioters that the latter attacked them
vigorously. The commandant of the municipal guard
and one Carabineer fell wounded.

Then the order to fire into the mob was given. It
was the claim of the military that the first shots were
fired into the air, but men who were in the mob averred
that they opened fire even before the commandant was
wounded.

Men, women and children withered away before the
blazing rifles like so much grass, and, when the mob had
dispersed, three lay dead on the grass, two more of the
wounded died in a short time, and four were known to
be in a very serious condition, while numbers of others
were hurt. The exact number did not even come out at
the investigation which was ordered by the government.

When I visited the commune it seemed as if a plague
had fallen. More soldiers were being hurried to the
district and posted in spots to command the situation,
arrests were being made, even in houses where the dead
lay; but a terrible silence hung over both military and
populace. I talked with one of the Carabineers, and he
told me he could never forgive himself for helping to
shoot down his own people, and that he longed for the
day when he could leave the service. It was the sec-
ond disturbance in which he had been, and in both cases
the sufferers were the simple-minded peasantry who,
finding themselves deprived of what they regarded as
their just rights, had been incited to violence by So-
cialists.

60 IMPORTED AMERICANS

The disgra^ia made a profound impression through-
out the kingdom, and more than one resident foreigner
in speaking of the subject remarked : ' ' Some day there
is going to be more than that. The people who really
work and produce something in this country are getting
about tired of paying enormous rents to support the
aristocrats, and heavy tithes and taxes to maintain the
Church, the army, and a government of splendor. We
expect trouble, and that before long."

The Socialists are growing, and a paper called Avanli,
published in Rome, is the chief organ of the malcon-
tents. During our stay in Italy it made a number of
successful exposes of ministerial and official derelictions
and won suits brought against it in retaliation, while
numerous illustrated weeklies indulged in caricatures
and cartoons of the Pope, cardinals and ministers, that
seemed to meet with great popular favor; but my ob-
servation was that socialism as a principle was not
generally understood by the masses, and the only rea-
son that the socialistic groups have much following was
Decause they are against things as they are rather than
for socialism as a solution of the problem of what they
should be. Socialism as a political belief is not being
readily transplanted to this country by any class of the
emigrants except the educated emigrants from the
north and in and about Rome.

CHAPTER V

IN THE ROMAN ZONE

FROM the Sabine Mountains to the sea, south to
Frosinone and north to Siena is that section of
the peninsula which, it seems to me, is so
greatly affected by life and conditions in Rome as to
be set off properly as the Roman zone. It includes the
greater portion of the provinces of Romagna Lazio, or
Latium and Umbria, and the lower portion of Tuscany.

The greatest positive influence in Italy to-day is the
Church ; the greatest potentiality, the army and the mili-
tary party ; the greatest question, the condition of the
peasantry of Italia Meridionale; the greatest danger to
the nation as a nation, the bitterness between the people
of the great and prosperous provinces of the north
and the less favored ones of the south.

As the centre of the world-wide Catholic Church,
of the political and military interests of the kingdom,
of art, education and literature, modern Rome is a city
of institutions, and her citizens are parasites in precisely
the same way that a majority of the population of
Washington is parasitical. I have not at hand the fig-
ures to show which city has the greater proportion of
industries, but I think there is little difference.

All through the region are quarries from which are
taken the material consumed in the thousands of
studios that produce the enormous volume of copies
of noted pieces of statuary and the slenderer stream of
new creations which pours out of Rome and disperses

62 IMPORTED AMERICANS

to other parts of the Continent, Great Britain and the
United States. The amount of art copies bought in
Rome by American tourists each season is very large,
much larger than is generally known, and forms the
most important source of revenue to the people of the
Roman zone, aside from the dispersion of government
funds, church funds and the compensation for the main-
tenance of the hosts of tourists and art, musical and
theological students. Next in industrial importance to
the stone-workers come the operations that pertain to
silk and to the making of imitation jewelry, of which
latter pursuit Rome is certainly the incomparable cen-
tre. Hundreds of shops in Italy display Roman imita-
tions that are nowhere excelled, and thousands of
workmen in imitation flowers, jewels, etc., are com-
ing into the United States, establishing themselves in
the New World in their old vocations and finding
things very prosperous indeed. In the vicinity of the
tenement house in which we lived on Houston Street,
down West Broadway and elsewhere in New York,
are scores of establishments engaged in this very busi-
ness, and all the workmen are Italians, from the zone
of Rome for the most part. All over the United States
the industry of designing, cutting and establishing
marble and granite pieces of all sorts for cemeteries is
rapidly passing into the hands of Italians, and in ques-
tioning many of them, in various parts of the country,
as to their native provinces, they have replied uniformly,
the Roman Campania or Tuscany.

The silk-weavers and hat-makers have centred in
New Jersey, and in Newark vie with the Jews, while in
Paterson they have the lists more nearly to themselves.
In Italy the class of workmen so engaged forms a
ready field for the operations of socialistic and anarchis-

IN THE ROMAN ZONE 63

tic agitators; and though the fruit of their labors is ren-
dered comparatively harmless in Italy owing to the
vigilance of the police and secret service, in the United
States, where there is freedom of speech, the fuller har-
vest is reaped and the greatest danger exists.

Back of these conditions lies the contempt which
these people have come to hold, in the Roman zone,
for both Church and State, and the reason is that to
them both St. Peter's and the Quirinal and all they rep-
resent are things far more ordinary and less impressive
than to the populace of the remoter provinces. Polit-
ical and religious skepticism is growing to be as dan-
gerously common among the poor people in and about
Rome as it was in France early last century. Many
social conditions are accurately reproduced, and there
are wise patriots who dread a repetition in Italy of
what followed the I4th of July, 1789, in France.

These things really concern the people of the great
northern provinces but little. They are busy and pros-
perous, educated and advanced, and, though within the
boundaries of the same nation, they are very distinctly
apart.

I can easily understand the attitude of the common
people in the Roman zone toward the aristocracy.
The representatives of this class were returning in
full force to Rome only about the time we left it, but
we had abundant opportunity in both Naples and
Rome for getting something near the proper measure
of these idling, pleasure-seeking, self-sufficient land-
holders. Having their position by right of birth, and
given every advantage of the European civilization as
a result of rent-rolls from huge inherited estates, we
found them to be, nevertheless, insolent, shallow, de-
generate physically, vicious and so thoroughly unfit as

64 IMPORTED AMERICANS

a class for the responsibilities of the rich and high-
placed that, if I had the choice between admitting to
the United States a wealthy educated Roman noble-
man and a poor Calabrese contract laborer unable to
read or write, I should choose the laborer every time.

Though the numbers of the middle class are lament-
ably small even in Rome, there is a greater and more
deplorable paucity farther south. In the agricultural
districts a man is either a laboring tenant or a land-
holder, except for those few who are village artisans,
tradesmen, or are in the liberal professions. It requires
well-divided ownership of land or diversified indus-
tries, as in the United States, to create that sturdy en-
lightened and independent middle class which is the
strength of any nation. The army of returned emi-
grants are the nearest approach to a middle class to be
found in many of the southern communes.

A man should certainly be able, under nearly all cir-
cumstances, to find a better use for his pen than in utter-
ing derogatory statements concerning any other man
or class of men engaged in the service of God,
no matter what their beliefs or his own convictions
may be; but the relation of the Italian priests to the
millions of emigrants that have come or will come to
the United States is of such importance that it would
be cowardly not to give an honest expression concern-
ing them. In a general sort of way the poor provinces
are referred to, just as is Spain, as "priest-ridden";
but to the average American that is a term of indefin-
iteness.

The thought of a Catholic cleric always brings to my
mind the memory of the Rt. Rev. M. F. Howley, F.
R. S. C., the noble and self-sacrificing Bishop of New-
foundland; of Father Tommaso laboring among the

Morning in the Village and Vineyards

IN THE ROMAN ZONE 65

poor Italian miners of the Pennsylvania anthracite
regions; of priests in frontier missions of the great
Canadian Northwest; of priests in the slums of New
York, Chicago, Cincinnati, and other cities; of men
whom I know, admire, and revere. So, judging the
Italian clergy by them and by them alone, I do not be-
lieve prejudice of any sort could be charged against
what is hereafter said.

Nor is it the Italian clergy as a whole or a major por-
tion that is open to criticism, except as it contributes
to the continuance of the oppressive, vitiating system
whose acute wrongs are wrought by the minority in
the cloth.

Rome, as the centre of the tremendous fabric of the
Church, witnesses not only the focussing of the benefi-
cent operations of the Church at large, but of the con-
demnable workings of the provincial clerics as well.
There the true root of the trouble is most nearly laid
bare, and it seems strange indeed that something so
unworthy should exist under the very walls of the
Vatican.

This basic condition is the propensity of indolent
young men, sons of impoverished families of quality,
sickly youths unfit for more strenuous pursuits, and de-
signing and ambitious students, to turn to the priest-
hood as affording them the prospect of a lifelong
"soft snap." They do this, and are supported in it by
their families, without the slightest regard, as a rule, to
any truly religious considerations whatever. Italy is
greatly overcrowded. Opportunities to rise in life are
very few indeed. The man is fortunate who can ho-'d
what his father attained. England has suffered and is
suffering from the incompetence of those younger sons
of good families who have turned to the church, army,

66 IMPORTED AMERICANS

and similar professions. In Italy the diversity of pur-
suits is still smaller than in England, and the candi-
dates far greater in number, while the examples of
Italian priests who have risen to bishoprics, arch-
bishoprics, the cardinal's hat, and even the pontifical
chair are so constantly before them, that men who are
really fitted by nature and fibre for the priesthood are
crowded out to make way for those who are unfit and
never become fit. Rome, more than all other cities,
sees them in the early stages of their evil progress, and
they take on cant, hypocrisy, and prejudice there which,
mingled with unscrupulousness, and often with vicious
propensities, make them a cloaked harass indeed to
the poor people of the parishes in which they are later
established.

In the villages of the provinces where the people are
poorly educated, the priests have nearly an absolute
control of local affairs. I do not mean in any way that
pertains to the business of the commune or as to its
officials, or the proceedings of law, but the deeper
current of life. A newly established school will thrive
or fail just as the village priests favor it or inveigh
against it. The holidays are the feast days of the pa-
tron saints, and it depends upon the priests whether
these days are mere occasions for bearing a painted
and carved figure of a saint through the streets to be
loaded with gifts of money and valuables by the pop-
ulace, or whether they shall be made occasions of re-
laxation and communal development to the people. A
very great deal of letter-writing is done by the priests
for illiterate parishioners, so that much of the corre-
spondence between emigrants in America and relatives
at home passes through the priests' hands. Not in-
frequently priests are money-lenders and take their

IN THE ROMAN ZONE 67

usury just as might the veriest Shylock, only that
their loan is a "charitable advance to an unfortunate
parishioner." An interesting incident of this sort of
thing happened at Velletri. An old priest of one of
the churches of the town had two brothers for parish-
ioners who desired to emigrate to America. One was
named Giuseppe and the other Giacomo. They had
barely money enough for one passage, though Giu-
seppe had a tiny bit of property. Both had borrowed
money of the old priest before and paid it back with a
high rate of interest. They plotted to get even with
him. Giuseppe turned the care of his bit of property
over to Giacomo and sailed for America. In a few
months Giacomo went to the priest and offered as se-
curity for a loan of 300 lire the property which did
not belong to him. The old priest took a note of
temporary conveyance, installed one of his dependents
in the property, gave Giacomo the 300 lire at twenty
per cent per annum, and Giacomo went to Naples
and sailed for New York. At the end of two years
the old priest was beginning to consider the property
already his, when Giuseppe came home on a visit,
proved that his brother had no right to offer the property
as security, and forced the priest to pay rent for it for
two years. Giacomo was of course safe from harm
in America. Giuseppe sold the property and returned,
and is now in partnership with his brother in a little
business on Vine Street, Cincinnati.

In an effort to maintain in the eyes of their parish-
ioners their own outward show of virtue, priests whose
lives have vicious tendencies often commit crimes
that are worse than murder. The attitude of the
Church toward an adulteress is a matter of common
knowledge. When it is said that the judging of the

68 IMPORTED AMERICANS

women of their parish is left in the hands of the
priests, and that in small communities a woman dis-
graced by such judgment has no opportunity of hiding
it from her neighbors, the terrible power of the padre
can be seen. There is scarcely a community which
has not its pathetic story; some have many, and I
have heard more than one told in brief whispers as
the poor woman who was the object of it passed by.
Yet, though convinced of her innocence, her neigh-
bors do not dare take up her cause, for fear of bring-
ing on their own heads what has fallen on her.

A son of a well-to-do oil and wine merchant in a
certain village was a patron of the priest in charge at
the principal church of the town. He was in love
with the daughter of the man who sold the salt and
tobacco for the government. She refused his atten-
tions, and, though there had never been a whisper
of blame against her, one Sunday she found that
the priest had directed against her the power of the
Church. She bravely faced the conditions, stepped
quietly into her new status in village life, and since
then has been living such a life of self-sacrifice and no-
bility that her very deeds have daily given the lie to
the charge against her. Since then the son of the oil
merchant has ruined his father and fled to Australia,
and the priest died a miserable death in a torrente into
which he stumbled while drunk; but to her is for ever
denied everything most dear to a woman.

Not so with many other women who come under
the ban: though equally innocent, though victims of
spite, of distorted circumstances, they fail to support
the blow and do become abandoned. The natural
current is toward the cities, where they may hide
from all who ever knew them in the village.

IN THE ROMAN ZONE 69

It must not be forgotten that this system has been
going on in a greater or less degree for centuries, and
it has forced the natural attitude of the fathers, hus-
bands, and brothers of the women into one of the
utmost watchfulness and jealousy. I have often heard
philanthropically inclined Americans who went into
the Italian quarters seeking to do good, complain that
the men were exceedingly averse to allowing their
wives or daughters to meet strangers, or to have any
of the usual liberties of American women. This
jealousy is traditional, and is the result of the system
outlined above.

Another point on which this system may have some
bearing is the devotion of the Italian women to the
Church compared with the indifference of the men.
In most civilized countries the women are more in-
clined to be religious than the men, but in Italy this
is accentuated, and the separation is growing, as the
skepticism to which I have referred spreads.

All over southern Italy one hears a bitter reference to
the decime, the one-tenth of a man's money which
is claimed by the Church each year; and though this
often works out as not a literal allotment of one-
tenth, there are many parishes, where the principal
priests are keen business men, that more than one-
tenth is extracted, and the tithes take form in labor,
vegetables, wine, fruit, fees, etc., but are nevertheless
valuable.

It is not a matter of economics and does not pertain
to this consideration, if the peasantry of southern
Italy are such good Christians as to give to the use of
God one-tenth of their all; but it certainly comes
within the scope of this study when that enormous
fund goes to support that portion of the priesthood

yo IMPORTED AMERICANS

which is unworthy and is nothing but an army of
hypocritical parasites.

Before leaving the subject of conditions in and about
Rome, the vagabondi should be mentioned. As I have
said, the government considers no man a pauper so
long as he is able to beg, and the tourist centres
have gradually drawn a great collection of professional
beggars, who are really artistic in their methods of ap-
peal. They are not satisfied, as is the beggar of
Naples, with a crust of bread, a sip of wine, and a
stone treasuring sun-warmth on which to stretch at
night, but go in for better things. At all the points of
interest in the way of ruins and the like, which lie in
the Roman zone, their representatives will be found.
The liberality and apparent great wealth of the
American tourists have inspired many of these to save
enough to emigrate to America, but they have found
begging a very poor occupation here, and in several
instances of which I have heard have gone to work
and are prospering.

In many districts where there are clay banks, sand
banks, and other spots where earth materials have been
extracted for building or plastic art work, the extrac-
tion has been done as if cutting out arched caves, and
in these and in the arches of ruins, with boarded-up or
plastered-up fronts, thousands of poor families live,
making their living by digging in the pits, acting as
guides about the ruins, begging, or working on the
land as hired laborers.

CHAPTER VI

IN THE HEEL AND TOE OF THE BOOT

IT is a very nearly safe prophecy to say that the
heel of the Italian Boot, or rather southern Molise
and Apulia, shall yet pour forth the greatest
flood of southern Italian emigrants bound for America
which has yet been witnessed in the varying exodus
from southern Europe. There have been times when it
seemed as if these provinces were about to rise and
distance Campania and Sicily, whose flow has gen-
erally been the largest; but the great mass of the
peasantry of the Apulian plain has not yet started
toward America, and will not until the status of the
Italian emigrant in America becomes similar to that of
the Irish in 1878-79, a quantity respected and duly
reckoned with, or until the steamship companies
make Bari, Brindisi, or Taranto ports of direct depar-
ture for the United States.

As remarked previously, the fluctuations of the vol-
ume of emigration, as viewed in retrospect and
from this side of the water, are hardly understood,
though a social crisis in Russia always produces an out-
pouring of the Jews, good crops in the Northwest an
increase in Scandinavians, and a period of strikes in
the United States an augmented Polish immigration.
The figures for the past twelve years, taken from June
till June, compared with the relative wage rate, are
interesting:

72 IMPORTED AMERICANS

Year Immigrants Arrived Average Daily Wage

in U. S.

1891 489.407 $1.00.

1892 579,663 1.00.30

1893 439,73° -99-32

1894 285,631 .98.06

1895 258,536 .97.88

1896 343,267 -97-93

1897 230,832 .98.96

1898 229,299 .98.79

1899 3».7I5 1-01.54

1900 448,572 1-03.43

1901 487,918 1.05.62

1902 648,743 1-04.93

1903 857,046 1.03.89

It will appear that there are other and less understood
influences at work, to cause the swelling or diminish-
ing of the flood of immigrants, than the wage rate in
the country. In a previous chapter I have noted the
bearing of the prospect of more stringent immigrant
legislation on the flood of 1903, and in the section of
the country now under discussion we found abundant
evidences of the effects of the news spread far and
wide that people who did not get into the United
States soon would find it more difficult than ever to
get in.

Many, many families on the Apulian plain, who had
been doing very well so far, were preparing to depart
for the United States just as soon as the harvest season
was over. They had been intending to go to the
United States for some years, but had put it off, fear-
ing to disturb a condition that was well enough, but
nevertheless being fully decided, sooner or later, to go
to the United States. The prospect of a law excluding
illiterates precipitated them. Many of these same fam-

Threshing Beans

IN THE HEEL AND TOE 73

ilies are already in this country, having left their homes
since we visited them.

There is something that is insistently Greek about
the people of the Heel, and they more nearly approach
the Oriental than any others of the Italian provincials.
I do not think they have quite the passionate natures
of the Sicilians or the ruggedness of the mountain
Calabrese, nor are they as energetic as their fleas, which
are certainly the liveliest I have ever encountered.

To the casual observer they seem to be lazy, and
their habitations present a certain neglected appearance
that is strongly contrasted with those houses in each
town which have been rehabilitated with money sent
home from America. But the people are not lazy.
They are merely bound by traditional methods of
doing things, and by an unconquerable sub-malarial
condition. In many spots one will see large planta-
tions of Eucalyptus globulus planted to counteract
malaria.

There is an odd theory, of interest only because of
its oddity, that the famous Apulian fevers are the re-
sults of the dissolution of the numbers of men fallen in
battles which have taken place on Apulian soil. A
little computation and historical reference shows mil-
lions of men to have fallen in the Heel, and when the
armies of the Crusaders camped about Brindisi they
were nearly wiped out by death from sickness. Ever
since that time feverts have prevailed, and there are
some spots that are certain death to any foreigner
should he sleep there over night.

Large quantities of cotton are grown in this region,
and when one is travelling south it will be noticed that
shortly after the groves of hazelnuts, beeches, and
chestnuts cease, the first plantations of cotton will be-

74 IMPORTED AMERICANS

gin to appear. The plain of Cannae roughly marks the
limit of the cotton country. Around the Gulf of Ta-
ranto there will be seen large fields of cotton and saffron,
and though the country is very fertile and densely
populated, the agricultural system is very bad, and the
ground inefficiently cultivated merely because it is a
centuries-old custom to let the ground lie fallow for
two years after each crop.

Olive orchards flourish, and nearly every consider-
able town is a centre of salad-oil manufacture. Or-
anges are grown in abundance, but cannot compete
with the Sicilian for export. The Apulian wine is very
fine, being much softer than the Sicilian, yet not as
popular as the wines of Capri and the Vesuvius region.

About Cotrone the finest licorice in the world is
produced, and in many spots there will be seen clusters
of date palms, though the fruit does not mature as
fully as it should.

Much of the wood required for artificial purposes in
southern Italy comes from western Apulia, Potenza and
Calabria. Fine oaks, beeches, chestnuts, etc., grown
on the mountains, and the Sila chain, whose highest
peak is snow-covered, are well clad with pines which
afford what the Italian carpenter calls legno bianco
(white wood).

Aside from agriculture, some of the few industries
are wood-cutting, taxed unbearably by the govern-
ment, sulphur-mining at Eboli, salt-mining about Lun-
gro, honey-producing about Taranto, fish-catching
and exporting from the same town, velvet and silk pro-
ducing in and about Catanzaro, and sheep and goat
herding in the Sila chain. The agricultural products are
the mainstay of the people, who are so densely packed
in some communities that if it were not for the Cactus

IN THE HEEL AND TOE 75

opuntia, which is grown in hedges in place of fences,
there would be scarcely enough to eat.

The town of Taranto, which is built on a rock cut
off from the land by a 239-feet-wide canal, which will
allow the passage of any battle-ship in the. Italian navy,
is possibly the most densely inhabited spot on the earth.
Sixty thousand people live there in a space so small
that New York's most thickly populated tenement dis-
tricts do not compare with it. An odd thing is notice-
able in this town, especially among the fishermen of
the Mare Piccolo. The Italian is generously tinctured
with Greek, and among the totally illiterate the jargon
is absolutely unintelligible to an outsider.

Around the Heel nearly all the settlements are well
back from the coast, and strange to say the reason is,
not that it is healthier or more convenient, but that in
the Middle Ages they were established there because it
was not safe to live alongshore. Since then no one
has thought of changing; in fact the entire region, ex-
cept as it has been stirred by the letters of emigrants
and the doctrines of Socialists and Anarchists, seems to
live by the precept, " What is, is best."

Something of the deep establishment of customs and
of the religious state of the country can be gathered
from the following. In Bari there is the Church of San
Nicola, than whom there is no more revered saint in all
Italia Meridionale, wherefore note the number of Nicolas.
In the crypt his remains are supposed to be encased in
a tomb from which exudes on and about the 8th of
May an oily substance that is miraculous. Pilgrims
come for the feast of the 8th of May by thousands and
thousands, and nearly all of them are in the costume of
the remoter villages. On the promontory at Cotrone
stands a pillar which marks the site of the temple of

76 IMPORTED AMERICANS

Hera, once the goddess of all the peoples about the
Gulf of Taranto, but now it has for a neighbor the
Church of the Madonna del Capo, and each Saturday
young girls from the region about go in procession to
the church in their bare feet, all clad in white.

The people in many of the towns are primitive, es-
pecially in the Basilicatan Mountains, where strangers
are often as unwelcome as they are to-day among the
mountaineers of East Tennessee. Some few families
control nearly all the tillable land, and exact from the
poor peasants one-half of all they produce on it for
rent. To the American farmer who has been long ac-
customed to raising a crop on shares, that does not
sound very bad, but the latifondo, as this system is
called, is one of the curses of Italia Meridionale to-day,
and in that portion of this narrative which deals with
our studies in Sicily, where the same condition prevails
as in Apulia, Basilicata, and Calabria, I shall give more
definite expression on the system. One of the very
powerful families in this region is the Baracco family,
and they literally hold in their hands the fate of a vast
region.

Not only is the country very primitive in spots, but
in some it is exceedingly wild. About Mount Vulture,
and especially in the great half-destroyed lateral crater,
the forests are so dense as to be almost impenetrable,
and wolves and wild boars are numerous.

Leaving entirely the consideration of the regions of
the Heel, and speaking only of Basilicata and Calabria,
which have been pouring emigrants into the United
States, there should be mentioned the great enemy of
the peasant, which has driven more men to America
than any other thing, the terrible torrente.

It is merely a mountain stream, totally dry in the

IN THE HEEL AND TOE 77

summer time, as what little water might course down
it is carried along in clay-lined irrigating ditches, and
distributed along the face of the hills sometimes hun-
dreds of feet above the level of the river bed, so clev-
erly are some of the canals constructed. But, in the
rainy season, when enormous quantities of water are
precipitated every day on the mountain sides, the tor-
rente becomes a devilish agent of destruction, and its
waters devastate whole communes in a few hours.

These districts have struggled to wall in with
masonry and concrete the whole course of the stream,
and to clear the bed of all obstructions which would
prevent the current having a straight, easy plunge to
the sea, but the water is perverse, and it is not unusual
for the best-curbed torrentes to rip out their walls and
ruin in a night the labor of twenty years. Taxes and
volunteer labor to repair communal works, and ex-
penditures and labors to patch up private estates, have
so impoverished the people that in many places they
have been forced to abandon, not only any attempt to
curb the torrente, but to maintain any department of
the communal government that costs as much as a
penny. The general taxes went unpaid, and when the
government forced sales of houses and gardens, the
people simply abandoned their places and became
wanderers or emigrated to America. At the present
time nearly all of the villages are in a condition that is
much improved. Money sent home from America is
doing it. But the torrentes are just as bad as ever, and
so long as they keep the people impoverished there will
be no money to pay for the maintenance of schools.

Sicily has a slight advantage in the formation of the
country, but there the torrente is still the object of
constant vigilance and does much damage. People

78 IMPORTED AMERICANS

of intelligence are fully aroused to conditions in Italia
Meridionale, and a very excellent expression of the
provincial attitude was given in an article by Signer
Enzo Saffiotti, which appeared in the Ga^etta di Mes-
sina delta Calabrie on the I5th of September, 1903.
It is given below:

THE SOUTHERN QUESTION CONFRONTS THE COUNTRY.

Congressional resolutions and government promises. The
burden on the Southern press. Great discontent among the
people. Resume of the past thirty years of conditions.
Riots in 1893. Agrarian and mining crises. The Church's
tenths, the great landed estates renting system and the
confiscated demesnial properties. Heavy usuries and peas-
ants' land contracts. Economic-social revival. Appeal to
Southern deputies. Restoration's era.

We must not grow weary of repeating it!

One of the most urgent and yet most difficult prob-
lems which the government and parliament have been
called upon and are obliged and bound promptly to
solve in the present course of our national life is the
question of the condition of southern Italy. In order
that such a mighty and intricate matter may be prop-
erly adjusted, verily must it be known to its every
limit and studied through its every cause.

It is the task of the press, and particularly of the
Southern press, to associate its endeavors with noble
and unselfish intention, to direct with exactitude the
current of public sentiment in the country, so that it
shall force the government to efficacious measures and
precautions. These may be obtained through some
financial sacrifice and reduction of useless expenditures
in the state budgets.

The state cannot entrench itself behind financial
difficulties when a question that is not regional arises,
for there are those to devise ways out of the difficulty.

The deficit of many millions could in no manner
continue to enfeeble the state budget if a preference

IN THE HEEL AND TOE 79

were given to the productive works, and the national
economic conditions would certainly be revived.

In parliamentary sessions, debates on the Southern
question have at all times been closed with vague votes
and presidential assurances, the latter tilled with so
many pretty promises for the improvement of these
our generous and forgotten regions.

They are promises which will doubtless continue to
remain unfulfilled, just as the preceding mass of as-
surances delivered by administrations, leaders, and
ministers. Meantime the South is waiting and will
continue to wait for those prompt reforms and vigor-
ous measures which would assist greatly in raising the
economic status, and for the future disclose a horizon
bright and clear. It is anxious to be lifted from that
condition of humbled inferiority into which the guilty
carelessness of its rulers have thrust it.

Just a little has been done, comparatively nothing,
directly to the advantage of our population, harassed
as it has been by the different forms of commercial
and industrial crises and vexed with all kinds of local
and fiscal taxes, yet they ever know how to keep high
and unchanging the Unitarian sentiment of the nation.

The cause of recurrent convulsions of agitation
among the working class and the slender middle class
is not entirely to be attributed to the propagation of
socialistic doctrines, as the government is so ready to
explain it. It is all a leaven of discontent working
within the population, a realization of the isolation in
which they are left, of the deprivation of the rightful
help and support from the government which with
provident laws and measures should defend their in-
terests, and further encourage and protect their indus-
trial undertakings.

The various ministers, during the last thirty years of
Italian political life, have done nothing that was re-
markable for these Southern regions, whose economic
conditions, though troublesome in the beginning, have
gradually grown worse.

As a matter of fact, the recurrence of those social
phenomena have given people at a distance who were

8o IMPORTED AMERICANS

inclined to turn their observation and consideration on
our affairs, a different impression from that which
would be gathered if the inward causes were other-
wise studied, and this attests in a very considerable
way the moral sentiment of our people, who, though
of great sensitiveness and resentful of wrong, quietly
sustain the additional adversity of being misunder-
stood, even when instinctively rebellious to all forms
of oppressive authority.

On the day after the conflict in 1893, when the ad-
ministration of that day set on foot measures to favor
the Southern provinces, which should eventually al-
leviate the severe hardships of our condition, the
universal discontent began to disappear rapidly.

The resumption of quiet was not the result of the
presence of bayonets and the pronouncing of exem-
plary sentences from temporary tribunals, for our
people fear neither, but came about through the
administration's pledging itself to help the population
and hurriedly presenting to parliament new and old
schemes for relief. Owing to political changes, these
remained merely in their former status, that of
schemes. Our people, mindful of the past, realize in
the new promises of the government nothing but a
quantity of pious lies, destined to deceive or satisfy,
if for no other reason, with their beautiful sound and
appearance. So pretences and claims on behalf of
these promises are merely like bad drafts of short
date, and even had the government fulfilled them it
would not have been generosity, but apportioned jus-
tice.

The hardships of southern Italy — those of Sicily are
common with those of the other regions — are of an
economical nature, and arise from complex causes, in
which are competing factors, but antique and recent,
permanent and transitory, and thus inducing excessive
taxes divided unjustly, agrarian and mining crises,
lack of needed public works, not of merely electoral
nature, but of a most necessary sort, the insufficience
of roads to connect districts, and the disproportionate
rates of the railroads for freight and transportation.

IN THE HEEL AND TOE 81

The first step toward a gradual reduction of these
oppressive tariffs, after so many years in which there
has been so much complaint, has at least been achieved
in a very cautious way by the first ordinance of
Minister Palenzo, which went into effect with good
results at the beginning of the present month. It is
to be hoped that our legislators will uphold it with ad-
ditional and greater reductions.

There still remain unsolved some other notable
questions, among which are the annual tithes of one-
tenth taken by the Church, the system of renting
piecemeal large properties on oppressive leases to the
peasants, and others, all waiting these many years to be
adjusted and regulated by a wise legislation. Also from
the distribution and opening up for cultivation of the
great demesnial estates (Church property confiscated
by the governments a quarter of a century ago), Sicily
and the other southern provinces could extract great
benefit and profit.

The provincial evils will increase gradually, but
powerfully, if radical reforms are not introduced and
carried out in the matter of the existing agrarian
regime, in which pauper peasants, on account of their
miserable condition, are making themselves greater
burden-bearers under onerous and usurious contracts,
thus prostituting their industry to usury and impeding
all agricultural progress.

Meanwhile the population is increasing so rapidly
that the products of the soil are become insufficient
for their very necessities. Prompt aid to agriculture,
which is the important resource of southern Italy, is
needed if the Mendionale population hope to derive any
increase in benefit or profit. Only with a readjustment
of the agricultural regime and the leasing of country
properties may we hope for a true and healthy social
revival. With the renewal of parliamentary pro-
cedures it is to be hoped that the government will
seriously undertake the Southern Italian question.

Our deputations — they who should be examples of
harmony and tenacity — instead of being objects of
daily criticism, should join compactly together, with-

82 IMPORTED AMERICANS

out making disrupting questions of party, race, or
political gradation, and demand and obtain those re-
forms waited for so long.

They should have a sole intention, a single aim: to
redeem the provinces of southern Italy from the straits
in which they lie so cruelly oppressed. Returning to
Montecitorio's halls they should not evade their princi-

Eal duty. Discussions about this matter there have
een in plenty, until now we demand action; on
behalf of the dignity and prestige of the entire
nation, the solution of the Southern Italian problem is
clearly imposed upon them. The legislative body has
already announced its position of being willing, and
facing its promises it cannot honorably fail.

After so many depreciations too often inspired by
misconceptions, after so many accusations, discredits,
and imputations treacherously cast on our patriotic
population, there might come suddenly an era of
reparation — it might come at once!
The South is waiting!

ENZO SAFIOTTI.

This, though comprehensive and with more than
one carefully veiled threat in the lines, is only one of
the many strong articles appearing in the southern
papers, and it is among the mildest. When the situ-
ation is reviewed, I believe it not ill considered to say
that Italy owes her immunity from a great rebellion in
the south to the relief afforded by emigration and
emigrant savings.

Scilla — Draught-oxen of Italy

84 IMPORTED AMERICANS

forts, and so near to the water-front street that we
could read the shop signs, we were interested to ob-
serve a large steamer lying at anchor taking on
emigrants, who were being brought from the quay in
rowboat loads. We could see a large group in and
about the offices of the La Veloce Line, and every-
where along the water front great posters announcing
the departures of emigrant ships, for the United States
for the most part, though some were for Australia and
some for South America. Those for Australia were the
ships that sail from Brindisi and have their principal
patronage from the Adriatic coast villages.

The posters were the same, and the general character
of emigrant-departure bustle the same, that we had
seen in the Boot, but over Messina there seemed to be
a spell of greater prosperity and activity than over any
of the other southern Italian towns. The streets were
strikingly clean. The people walked almost as rapidly
as Americans. The pretentiousness of Naples and
Rome was missing. Business houses seemed to be
built and used for business houses only. On the
water front three American emblems were visible, —
one over the door of the consulate where I knew Mr.
Charles M. Caughey of Baltimore to preside, and the
other two over wide-open doors decorated with huge
white signs " AMERICAN BAR."

I learned later that the two wine-shops where they
really can set out a good dry cocktail and a standard
gin rickey are owned, one by a father and the other
by his son. The father emigrated to New York about
the time of the Civil War, and according to reports
boasts of having jumped the bounty three times, and
amassed a fortune in the saloon business in New York.
The son is also keeping bar, because it is the only

GUALTIERI-SICAMINO 85

thing he knows how to do, and is waiting for his
father to die, when I fancy there will be one less
American flag on the water front of Messina. Both
father and son are American citizens, and are much in
demand with the emigrants; and from all I could
gather they and their operations could be very well
dispensed with.

We stopped in Messina only long enough to get
fed, freshened, and in some small degree rehabilitated,
and then took train for Gualtieri-Sicamino, intending
to use that place as a base of observations in Sicily.

Having heard from Italians of the north that the peo-
ple of southern Italy were for the most part low-
browed swine, and having found the people in the
Boot to be decent, kind-hearted and hard-working,
though ignorant and poor, we were prepared to doubt
the Sicilians to be the bloodthirsty, stiletto-using ban-
ditti, such as they are popularly supposed to typify.
It was a real gratification to find the first representa-
tives we met to be of a thoroughly desirable type con-
sidered from the standpoint of good raw material for
a great growing nation.

Nor did we have occasion thereafter to change our
first estimates.

As our train roared through the tunnels and toiled
around the bold faces of the mountains the greater
portion of that mid-afternoon, we were talking anx-
iously of what Gualtieri must be like, for it was set
down in the books as a town of 5,000 people, and we
feared that it would be much too large a community
to yield the typical country family such as we had
found made up the great mass of Italian emigrants.
Soon we left the heights and the narrow defiles, and
came down to the sea in plain view of the island vol-

cano Stromboli, belching great volumes of vapor into
the azure dome, and finally pulled up at Santa Lucia,
bracketed in the time-table as the station of the town
of Gualtieri. When we stepped out of the compart-
ment the only building near at hand was the square,
squat, stuccoed station, while a few houses straggled
away in the distance. We were for climbing aboard
again, but the guards were calling " Santa Lucia-
Gualtieri-Sicamino, Pagia, San Filippo," and even as
we hesitated the capo blew his horn and the train
crawled away towards Milazzo, in view on the far
blue cape, and left us standing there.

To the north was the blue-green sea close at hand,
to the east and west the bold knees of the mountains
coming out to the water line, to the south the hills
piled one on another, broken by twisting valleys. In
the late afternoon sunlight, falling athwart the inland
slopes, I could see how they were terraced like gardens
in order to allow them to be cultivated and the ter-
races ran up to great heights. Certainly there was
nothing about us to make us think we had come to a
too city-like community for our experiment. Many,
many miles away on heights we could see some white
houses in clustering villages, but if there was a town
of five thousand people lying about somewhere it was
rather artfully concealed.

As I surrendered our tickets to the capo di sia^ione
I said: —

" Is this the station for Gualtieri-Sicamino ? "

" Yes, sir."

" Well, where is the town ? "

" You go along this road."

He pointed to a narrow wagon road running along
the tracks for a short distance, then winding into the

GUALTIERI-SICAMINO 87

heart of the hills. It was two inches deep with dust,
and the sun beat down on it with great fervor. In
addition to our being encumbered with the heavy
camera, and one carefully packed valise, I realized that
it was about 1 10° Fahrenheit on that bit of the king's
highway.

" How far is it to the town ? "

" Eleven kilometers, sir." (Seven miles and more!)

"I — I — suppose I can hire a carriage hereabouts,"
1 said,— a little faintly, I fear.

" No, there is no cart around here now."

" How about a donkey or two ? "

The station-master swept the surrounding country
with hand-shaded eyes and shook his head depre-
catingly.

" No, all that I can see are carrying loads of grapes."

Seven miles' tramp in that dust and sun with our
luggage, which contained photographic things too
precious to leave out of our sight!

Half a mile from the station we passed three women
going along in a sort of dog-trot with great baskets of
figs, just picked, on their heads, a rolled-up bit of cloth
between head and basket.

" I think I have the point of view of those women,"
said my wife's voice from the pillar of dust that sur-
rounded and hid her as the salt did Mrs. Lot.

In a short time a farmer who had been on our train
overtook us. He was carrying a heavy sack of things
the neighbors had commissioned him to buy in Mes-
sina, and in one hand he bore two salt cod, still drip-
ping with brine. Later I learned that salt fish are a
delicacy in Sicily and that the south of Europe is one
of the best markets for Gloucester fishermen. My
imperfect Italian caught his ear at once, and when he

88 IMPORTED AMERICANS

learned that my native tongue was English he de-
manded eagerly whether I had been in America or not;
and when I answered in the affirmative he said I must
excuse him, but were we not the friends that rich
young Antonio Squadrito was expecting ? Reluc-
tantly enough 1 said we were, for my parting words
with young Squadrito on leaving the Lahn were that
he should keep our coming quiet and say nothing as
to our nationality. There was very little now in our
appearance or conduct to show we were Americans,
and all through our travels we took refuge in the wide
disparity of North of Italy dialects from the Sicilian,
and those persons who did not think us Milanese or
Turinese knew we must be French or Spanish — except
in Gualtieri. There Antonio had let the cat out of the
bag. As a result the whole town had been in a state
of exalted expectancy for weeks. The people had a
carreta, one of the open, springless mule carts, trimmed
and decorated ready to be sent to meet us, and in fact
our arrival was to be a public festival, but there was
one slip — I had not sent Antonio a letter or telegram,
and so we plodded on in the dust unmet and unwel-
comed.

The farmer announced himself as our friend and
said he would guide us straight to the Squadrito
house, for he had a cousin in America, close to New
York, — in Cincinnati in fact, — and, with the blessing of
the Holy Mother, if his wife ever got well enough, he
was going there too, taking her and the family.

We might have been a traveling circus or an army
with banners. Of every five people we met, two at
least turned to escort us back to the town, while the
news of our arrival was shouted to the inmates of
every house we passed and to the hundreds of men,

GUALTIERI-SICAMINO 89

women and children who were toiling in the fields.
We overtook a flock of sheep being driven two miles
to water, and soon we formed the van of the most
picturesque cavalcade imaginable — men, women,
sheep, babies, donkeys and goats. At a distance the
country looked sparsely settled. Close at hand we
found that it veritably swarmed with life, for the
average population is 2,500 souls to the square mile.

The hills shut out the sun; a cool breeze sprang up;
the boys gathered fresh figs for us from the wayside
trees, grapes from vineyards as we passed, black-
berries from bush-grown stone-heaps, apples, pears,
plums and Ficus indicus, the thorn-covered, mango-
shaped golden-yellow fruit which grows on the edge
of the thick leaves of the cactus hedges of Sicily, and
forms a very important and staple article of food with
the poor. There is a Sicilian proverb which says:
" No matter how dire the misfortune, there are fico-
d'indias."

Finally, as we turned a sharp corner in the road, we
beheld the town, lit by the last rays of the sun filtering
through a defile in the hills; and, weary, hot and dusty
as we were, something akin to relief and soothing
satisfaction stole over us as we saw that it and the
country about was typical of all we had seen in the
other provinces of southern Italy.

Gualtieri-Sicamino is a mass of stone-built, plaster-
covered houses with a uniformity of architecture which
hardly allows one to distinguish public buildings,
stores or churches from private houses, and the whole
is piled up against the face of a lofty hill. Nearly all
villages in southern Italy are on the hilltops or the hill
slopes, so that, as a Roman wrote nearly two thousand
years ago, "the land that can be cultivated with ease

90 IMPORTED AMERICANS

should not be cumbered with habitations." The gen-
eral plan was identical with that of dozens of other
villages we had visited: a street or two circling the
base of the hill, one or two tiny squares, bare as new-
laid eggs, then a succession of zigzag ways towards
the top of the hill: ways,— they are not streets, be-
cause in some places they are not more than three feet
wide, and one third of the way the ascent is so sharp
that stone steps are used. The village is much as it
was eight hundred years ago. Below its edge is the
200-foot ribbon of sand and shale, strongly walled in
along its whole length from the sea to the heart of the
mountains, the then dry torrente, or river bed.

Below us lay Gualtieri, with its white walls and
dark tiled roofs, a rose-haze over it from the sinking
sun, embowered in the clustering hills dark green with
vineyards, olive and lemon orchards, the white belt of
the torrente below and radiating ribbon footpaths along
which came pannier-laden donkeys ; little flocks of milk-
goats; stoop-shouldered men bearing their long-bladed
hoes and spear-shaped spades; erect women with bril-
liant-colored skirts, scarfs or kerchiefs, water-jars,
baskets, panniers or bundles on their heads.

Our little procession wound down to the bridge,
which looked almost Syracusan, it is so old, and across
into the "square," on one side of which is the prin-
cipal church, and on the other the municipal offices.
The description sounds well enough ; but the church is
a low, squat building with a small tower in which
reposes a cracked bell and a noisy clock, while the
"municipal offices" are two rooms on the second
floor of a merchant's combined store and home;
the square is possibly sixty by one hundred feet, the
largest open space in the community. In all the town

The Messenger — The Guide — The House of the Squad-
ritos — The Town (Gualtieri)

GUALTIERI-SICAMINO 91

there is not a street over twelve feet broad, and some
would measure four or three. As we wound out of
the square into one of these narrow ways and heard
voices proclaiming on every hand that "Antonio's
Americans" had arrived, all fears that Gualtieri was
too urban, and not a true type of the rural districts
which send the emigrants, forever vanished from our
minds.

Suddenly, in the narrowest part of the way in which
we were, I saw over the door of a small hole-like room
in the wall:

BOTTEGA

DI
NICOLA SQUADRITO,

and, seeing two boys at work with a small anvil and
hand-drill, knew that this was the blacksmith shop of
Antonio's younger brother. Two doors beyond, a
kindly old face appeared at the door an instant, our
procession set up a shout, and something told me this
was Antonio's mother. We were ushered into a large,
cool, windowless room with a red-tiled floor and bare,
white walls, along which were rows and rows of hand-
made rush-bottomed chairs. There must have been
forty of them, and it seemed to augur well for the size
of the family; but we learned later that the chairs stood
there ready for the throng of neighbors who came
nightly to hear Antonio tell of the marvels of America
and to laugh over his prodigious yarns of buildings
twenty stories high. Nightly they would shake their
heads and laugh, and then Antonio would say: "Just
wait till my American friends come, and you can ask
them."
Poor Mrs. Squadrito was almost beside herself.

92 IMPORTED AMERICANS

Our sudden descent upon her, the absence of all other
members of the family in the vineyard east of town,
the highly excited crowd which was pushing its way
into the doors behind us, were too much for her, and
she hastened to show us into an upper room — Antonio's
room, we could see at a glance — and to bar out the
crowd.

In ten seconds she had brought a flask of fine old
Marsala, in thirty more a plate of sugared cakes, in
fifty a heaping basket of several sorts of grapes, fresh
figs, pears, apples, etc., and it was with difficulty she
could be restrained from bringing more. Swift-footed
small boys had sped to bring Antonio and others of the
family. Their number is so large that, unless the
individuals are properly identified the reader may get
them confused.

At this point in the narrative Antonio and his father,
being home on a visit, are to be subtracted from the
portion in America. Giuseppe, twenty-nine years of
age, Carlino, twenty-two, and Tomasino, fourteen,
are in charge of the barber shop in Stonington. The
total is father and mother, ten children, one daughter-
in-law and one grandchild; and the nine in Italy, be-
sides Antonio and his father, are as follows:

Giovanina, the oldest daughter, is twenty-eight, and
a lovable girl. For some years she was rather frail, and
her marriage with her soldier lover was deferred. He
decided to stay in the army for another term, and he
has been in the service fourteen years. In one year
more he is to be discharged with a life pension, and
Giovanina thinks that then the long, romantic dream
of her life will come true. I have often looked at her
face, sweet by reason of the soul that shines through
its mask of flesh already beginning to fade, and have

GUALTIERI-SICAMINO 93

wondered if there was not a great disappointment
awaiting her at the crest of the hill.

Next in the family comes Maria, a bright-eyed
girl of twenty-three, wild with eagerness to go to
America.

Carlino, I have said, is already in America, and next
younger than he is Nicola, the blacksmith, with a shop
in which he does really wonderful things with his
hands. One day, for instance, he made a trunk lock
with four tumblers, all parts from raw metal, which
was truly a marvel of handicraft.

Vincenzo is a half-grown boy, merry, tuneful and
irresponsible. Giovanni, Jr., and Tono are ten, eight
and six years of age respectively, and are boys of the
most thoroughly boyish type, only that they have early
learned the great lesson of southern Italy that "he
who eats must toil."

The most interesting character of all is the mother,
now fifty-four years of age, a woman of most kindly
heart. Her hands are gnarled and knotted with toil.
In her ears are heavy gold earrings with antique coral
centres. Once they belonged to her grandmother, and
some day they will descend to Caterina, her first
granddaughter, the child of Giuseppe and his wife
Camela. The wife, who is a plain, hearty woman, can
scarcely wait for the day when she reaches New York.
Tears of joy rise in her eyes at the very mention of
her husband's name. Little Caterina, or Ina, is but
five, and is the pet of all.

But here the family and half the neighborhood come
trooping up the stairs, escorting Antonio, who, since
his arrival, had been treated like a king, and now he
welcomed us royally and we were dragged into a per-
fect maelstrom of introductions to cousins and friends,

94 IMPORTED AMERICANS

to emerge a trifle confused as to relationships and
names.

When we had removed some of the grime of our
tramp and displayed the mysteries of our kodak to the
throng, which could not contain its impatience con-
cerning the black box and rolls of films, we were
taken on a twilight walk in the little plot of vineyard
ground which Antonio had bought three years before,
east of the town.

The ostensible object of the walk was to show the
town to us, but the real one, as we soon understood,
was to show us to the town. My wife walked with
Antonio and his father; Carmelo Merlino, the shoe-
maker and steamship agent, took my arm, and the
people who could crowd into the narrow street,
formed a procession behind us.

From that time on we lived in procession. What-
ever we did, big or little, was done in procession.
Did I desire to take a photograph of the town in the
late afternoon from the hill opposite, five hundred in-
habitants came to my help. If my wife went to the
public laundry with the women, you would have
thought the festival of the patron saint of laundries
was in celebration. Did 1 go forth to the fields with the
men at dawn, there was a centurion's host to witness.

On our return from the garden it was after six
o'clock, perhaps near seven, and we found many peo-
ple waiting to see us, and in the next half hour the
neighborhood called. Family after family poured in,
all dressed in Sunday attire, and as we sat in the large
second-floor room of the Squadritos' house the entire
apartment was thronged to suffocation, while in the
street outside there were people enough to fill a circus
tent.

GUALTIERI-SICAMINO 95

We had had an abundance of fruit, but were not
averse to a little dinner, yet none appeared to be forth-
coming. Unsubstantial as it was to us, all that we
had to say was meat and drink to the people. Rapt
in excitement they stood listening to the stories of the
land of their heart's desire, and no thought of food dis-
turbed them. At seven o'clock my wife had told all
that could be told of dresses, manners and customs in
America. At eight o'clock I concluded an impromptu
lecture on the topic of American liberty; still no dinner.
At nine o'clock my wife had answered the last of the
questions on the cost of groceries, rent and clothes,
but no one mentioned dinner. At 9: 30 1 had described
with minuteness what factories and mills were like,
and my wife was expressing her liking for Italian
dishes. At ten (having lunched at eleven o'clock that
morning) we both showed signs of faintness, but still
talked on. At eleven all the children were asleep on
the floor or in their mothers' arms, my wife seemed
dead of fatigue, and my own exhaustion was com-
plete, when something broke the spell and Mrs.
Squadrito suddenly threw up her hands with a pious
ejaculation and darted up-stairs. In ten minutes we
were seated at a most delightful supper, including a
heaping dish of boiled snails. The whole family had
forgotten in the excitement that neither they nor we
had dined, but they certainly made up for the over-
sight.

In this house, as in most others, the top floor was used
for the dining-room and kitchen. The kitchen was in
one corner — a sort of low altar of stone and plaster,
with a hollow in the centre for charcoal. As some
American architects have learned, cooking done on the
top floor neither scents up nor heats the house.

g6 IMPORTED AMERICANS

We sat chatting about the table until the cracked
bell in the tower of the church in the square struck
one, then my wife and 1 sought the repose and com-
fort of the big, high-set bed of the guest-room.

It was a strange sound which awoke me. Paradox-
ically, it was something very familiar. Clear and
sweet, very distinct in the air of the early morning, a
boy's voice high up in the terraced vineyards on the
slope before the town was singing:

" Who was it called them down ?
'Twas Mister Dooley, brave Mister Dooley,
The finest man this country ever knew ;

Diplomatic,

Democratic,
Oh! Mister Dooley — ooley — ooh."

Then there broke forth the chatter of men, women
and children who were gathering grapes, and had
stopped to listen to an American song. The boy had
been in America two years, his father had contracted
consumption working in the New York subway, and
the family had returned that he might recover in the
balmy air of Sicily. One day the boy told me that as
soon as he was big enough (he is eight years old) he
was going to run away and go to America, because
he could make more money selling papers after school
than he could working all day in the fields in Gualtieri,
and here he " never had no time for no fun."

The spirit of this incident is the spirit which to-day
stirs all Italy, all Greece, all Syria, all Hungary and
Roumania, and has spread deep into the hearts of
the people of the whole of southern Europe. The
eyes of the poor are turned with longing fancy to
"New York." That is the magic word everywhere.

GUALTIERI-SICAMINO 97

The sound of it brings light to a hundred million faces
in those lands, and oddly enough not one out of a
thousand but believes that to come to America it is
necessary to come to New York.

When I opened the battened shutters that took the
place of windows, there was a cool inrush of fragrant
air, and looking down from the balcony I saw Nicola
already at work at his anvil. Carmelo Merlino was at
his shoemaker's bench set out before the door, and
across the way the Di Bianca girls were giving the
fat baby a bath in a large yellow bowl. The baby
was splashing the water with great delight. All was
peace and industry. We had begun our first full day
in Gualtieri life.

People are up betimes in Italy. The very early
morning hours are best for work, and a couple of
hours' labor is often accomplished before breakfast.
An ordinary breakfast is vegetable stew, bread and
fruit, — in summer fresh fruit, in winter dried. In fruit-
ripening season, on every house-top and balcony, figs
are drying, raisins and prunes are in the making, and
prematurely plucked fico-d'indias are being made ready
for winter use. Canned fruit is little used. A mash
of tomatoes to use in winter with spaghetti is always
drying at door or on house-top in sunshine.

The midday meal is eaten usually about 1 1 '.30, and
is much the same, only less is eaten in the summer,
and perhaps, though only once or twice a week, some
meat, eggs or fowl are made to take the place of the
vegetable stew. In the evening soup is served, made
with some one of the thousand sorts of spaghetti and
macaroni, as I will call it, though that word covers only
a part of the great Italian dish, pasta. A meat stew
may be added and more fruit and wine. I have seen

98 IMPORTED AMERICANS

poor families dine heartily off black bread, fried
pumpkin and fico-d'indias, and in homes of more pre-
tension I have eaten very good course dinners.

The men, women and children work in the fields,
vineyards and orchards, transport products to market on
mule-back, in donkey carts or on platform carts
drawn by great white or gray, long-horned oxen. A
team of the latter is a beautiful sight. The women not
in the fields, in addition to household work, carry heavy
jars of water on their heads ; wash clothes in the public
la-vacro ; pick grapes, olives, fruits, almonds, walnuts ;
cut, mangle and clean hemp ; gather, flail out; and
clean peas, beans, etc. ; and bear children. The duty
of maternity is the first thought of the Italian woman.
Fecundity is the prime marital virtue and her principal
hold on her husband's esteem.

There are many labors which are shared by men,
women and children, such as herding the goats, tread-
ing the grapes in the winepress, vegetable-gathering
and attending to the irrigation. This latter is very im-
portant. The loads which men ^nd women can carry
on their heads are huge. I have seen a man coming in at
the finish of a five-mile trot with 120 pounds of grapes
on his head, and all the way he has maintained a gait very
similar to that of a dog. Very early in life the children
are taught to carry loads on their heads.

The morning of the second day, people began to
come to us for advice and information. There were
two or three old men in Gualtieri, — old beyond the abil-
ity for anything but very light labor. They wanted to
send their sons to America that the boys might get
a foothold and then bring them. They all asked
me what was the best work for a young man to do
in my country. All were farmers living in the village,

Part of the Family Gathered in the Kitchen (From left to
right: Ina, Tono, Giovanina, dntonio, Mrs. Squadrito,
Giovanni, Jr. , Nicola, Maria)— Felicia. Pulejo — Concetta

GUALTIERI-SICAMINO 99

who went out each day to work the little patches of
ground they called farms.

These holdings were almost invariably owned
by some one else, a few by well-to-do people in the
village, most of them by the Duke of Avarna, who
lives in Naples and never comes near Sicily, though
he owns nearly all the ground around Gualtieri.
The actual farmers tilled the soil, bought or pre-
served the seed, supplied the implements, looked after
the construction and maintenance of the irrigation,
harvested the crop and often marketed it, then gave
the landowner's agent, the middleman at Faro near
by, half of all they produced. Of what they had left,
three per cent went for direct or indirect taxes, and
they gave "voluntarily" to the church one tenth. A
little calculation will show one that even if a farmer
have a prosperous season and be not in debt or have
any misfortunes, he retains, when he has finished his
contributions to the support of the non-producing
classes, aristocrats, tradesmen, army, church, and
middlemen, but thirty-eight per cent of what he pro-
duces by toil from before dawn till after dark.
When I say that ninety-four per cent of the produc-
tion in southern Italy is agricultural, and that the one
important source of wealth is the cultivation of the
soil, and the control of wealth the ownership of the
land, it can be understood how and why the poor
farmer, having heard what betterment there is in the
United States will borrow money at twenty per cent
for six months to get himself or a son over here to es-
tablish a foothold from which he can broaden a space
of relief and liberty.

Many of these boys in Gualtieri, anxious to go, de-
sired to escape the forcible conscription every two

ioo IMPORTED AMERICANS

years, which takes every other able-bodied young
man, and keeps one fifteenth of the able-bodied men
of the country under arms at all times. The Italian
government never relinquishes its claim on its men for
military duty, and no matter whether they become
American citizens or not, if they have not served their
term and return to Italy, they are arrested and con-
scripted. A notable test case of this was that of the
young man from Baltimore, — Schipriano, son of an
Italian general, — in which the government won.

Even though the Squadritos have raised themselves
to an independent footing in Gualtieri and own a little
land, the power of the landlord was demonstrated
fully to me when, on the second day of our stay, Gio-
vanni Squadrito got out from among the things he had
brought back from America a nice piece of oilcloth, a
treasure in Italy, and tramped off to Faro and presented
it to the middleman, the agent of the Duke of Avarna,
as a sort of propitiatory offering. At the agent's
office there was a considerable staff of clerks and bail-
iffs, which showed me what a business is this collect-
ing of the crops and rents.

One poor old woman toiled across the hills to see
my wife to implore her to take her to America. She
had a daughter who had gone there as a servant last
year, and in the three months previous to the old
woman's first visit to us she had had no letter or
word of news. She was nearly frantic and wished to
go in search of the girl. In the time we were in Gual-
tieri before our party started for New York, no tidings
came. My wife was forced to tell her that she could
never go to America, the age limit and the public-
charge law would stop her at Ellis Island and send her
back.

GUALTIERI-SICAMINO 101

It was not unusual for a whole family from far over
the hills to arrive late some afternoon to pay their re-
spects, and before they had been seated long a certain
uneasiness on the part of the women culminated in the
oldest man of the party producing from inside his shirt
a strip of paper, much thumbed, torn and pasted. In
faded ink it bore the names and addresses of a son, a
brother, father, perhaps daughter across the ocean.
Though they knew my home to be NewYork, they were
often disappointed because I could not give them news
of the beloved relative in Bangor, Me. ; Birmingham,
Ala. ; Brownsville, Tex. ; in Chili, Brazil or Canada. One
man had a button photograph of Francesco Zotti, who
had formerly been my neighbor in New York. As it
chanced I once shook hands with Zotti, and when I
told his relatives this they actually cried for joy.

The people have no true conception of America,
though Italy is flooded with books of views principally
of New York and the Pan-American Exposition, and
there is a brave effort made by the Italians in America to
write home adequate descriptions of the new land.
Once I was called upon to settle a most bitter and ac-
rimonious dispute between two men as to what
America was like. One, who had a brother in Wilkes-
barre, Pa., thought it was all coal mines, steel mills
and railroads, while the other, whose cousin worked in
a New York barber shop, maintained that America
was all high buildings and railroads which run over the
house-tops. Each new letter caused the argument to
break out afresh.

One woman, who had a husband working in a
saloon in Pittsburg, was very effusive in her greeting
and her conversation with us until, in answer to her
question as to what kind of parrot we had, I replied :

102 IMPORTED AMERICANS

"Why, my dear madam, we have no parrot."

I noticed a look of suspicion shoot across her face,
and her manner became strangely reserved. I could
see that from that moment she was extremely skep-
tical about anything we said. In a little while, when
talking aside with some member of the family, she
openly expressed her doubt that we were Americans
or had ever been in America. This was laughingly
repeated to me for a reassertion as to our nationality.

"What makes you think we are not Americans?"
I asked the dubious visitor.

" Because you have no parrot."

I do not hesitate to say I thought she must be de-
mented, but in further explanation she produced a
bunch of her husband's letters to prove her statements,
and, reading them through hastily, I found that there is
a parrot in the saloon where he 'tends bar, and one
across the street, and the things these two parrots do
and say make up the burden of his letters home, so his
wife was convinced that America is a land of parrots.

For days there was a constant succession of gaieties,
and I was glad we were not compelled to eat and drink
one tenth of what was set before us. We were
loaded with messages from fathers, mothers, brothers,
sweethearts, wives, children, and friends for those
already in America.

The Mannino family, living across the torrente in
the western section of the town, being relatives of the
Squadritos, were foremost in trying to do the honors
of the relationship and were much concerned that a
young nephew go with us, but I saw at a glance that
he had favus, and 1 told them he would be excluded.
He was insistent and started for Naples to take a
steamer of another line, having been assured that by

GUALTIERI-SICAMINO 103

the payment of one hundred francs to some persons
at Naples he could be smuggled through. Soon a
telegram came from Naples, saying the people who
were going to smuggle him had robbed him of every
cent. He asked for more money, it was sent him, and
he sailed. I have so far failed to find any trace of him,
but he did not return to Gualtieri and I believe he must
have entered the United States through Canada, as this
is a mode of ingress the United States is yet seeking
to completely block. Of all the wealth of trickery
and immigration fraud which I afterwards was able to
lay my hands upon, this was the very first hint, and
yet what would have been a fine specific case has
escaped me.

CHAPTER VIII

THE SICILIAN COUNTRYSIDE

IT seemed wise, during our stay in Gualtieri-
Sicamino, to make a study of more than lay in the
province of Messina, and so we pursued the same
methods of research employed in the provinces of the
mainland, but found the conditions of life among the
Sicilians so equable with that of Gualtieri-Sicamino,
that to tell what we saw elsewhere would be but to
repeat what is said of the village home of the
Squadritos, with the exception of a few notable
incidents.

The northern side of the island is much more fertile
and is therefore more densely populated than the
southern slopes, which are unprotected from the hot
winds from Africa; and in the mountains back from
Girgenti and Sciacca where travel is quite difficult
except on mule-back, the state of the people is of the
most primitive sort, and a man who can read and
write is a man of distinction in the community in
which he lives. Some of the families are of a com-
plexion that is nearly Malayan, and their long black
hair is beautiful to see. Wherever a branch office of
a steamship ticket broker has been established and
emigration started, or wherever the tourist goes
scattering gold, there is a marked difference from the
communities where a stranger is nearly a catastrophe.
The western end of the island is the famous Marsala
wine district, and one firm controls all of the best

Visitors in the Author's Room — Teresa di Bianca — The Old
Woman up the Valley — Shyness in Shawl and Pattens —
Small Children Labor in the Fields

THE SICILIAN COUNTRYSIDE 105

vineyards but a few, which are gradually being forced
into the monopoly. One man who was regularly
employed by this company told me that he received
thirty-five lire per month for ten hours' labor per day
(about twenty-one cents per day).

Catania is the exporting centre of the eastern end of
a rather prosperous sulphur-mining district on the east-
ern coast of the island, and in this harbor are vessels
constantly loading with sulphur for the American and
German markets. It is estimated that about fifty thou-
sand people derive their livelihood from this industry,
and it is the one notable industry other than agriculture
in the entire island. The largest though not the most
fertile plain of Sicily is about Catania, and some
very fine estates are to be found there, owned for the
most part by wealthy people in Messina or Naples,
perhaps resident in the beautiful cities of northern
Italy.

The political disturbances which have made Sicily
an uncertain quantity in years past, the comparative
isolation of Palermo from the central government, and
the effect of the traditions of the Sicilian Vespers
(1282 A. D.) which are well known to every man,
woman and child, topped by the natural supremacy
of the educated unscrupulous over the ignorant well-
meaning, have caused Palermo to become to a certain
extent what Naples is, — the scene of aggregated
rogueries. The past twenty years have seen mal-
feasances by high officials, impositions by aristocrats,
commercial and political plots, and outrages by
declared criminals, which brand the beautiful capital of
the Sicilian state as a nesting-place of the boldest and
most nefarious malefactors in all Italy. The common
people are not dishonest in the degree that the

io6 IMPORTED AMERICANS

Neapolitans are, but the educated classes can boast
some bright and shining lights in the public arid
private hold-up game that should make even St. Louis
or Philadelphia envious. An English officer of a Liver-
pool tramp steamer, who has spent a very great deal
of time in Palermo when shore superintendent of a
line in the lemon trade, told me that "a Palermo
politician can give any Tammany district leader cards
and spades, and beat him with his hands tied."

Col. John A. Weber, of Buffalo, formerly Immigrant
Commissioner at the Port of New York, thinks im-
migration should be encouraged to an even greater
volume than at present, but that dishonest and illegal
naturalization is a rotten spot in the matter. In this he
is correct, and I would add that my observations have
been that more men from Palermo, who have found
even that city too hot for them, are engaged in the
brokerage of naturalization papers in the United States
and Italy than any other city's representatives. A bill
newly introduced by Congressman Gulden, of New
York, is intended as a corrective, but I doubt its
efficiency.

One of the first things that strikes the American vis-
itor to the rural districts of Calabria, Sicily or Apulia,
and even farther north, is the antiquated processes em-
ployed by the farmers. A man who knows what a
sulky plow and a harvester are rebels at the sight of
an entire peasant family spading up a field or reap-
ing a crop with sickles, and there is a vast difference
between a big green and red Studebaker wagon drawn
by two good horses and loaded to the top boards with
apples or potatoes, and a string of donkeys, women,
and children laden with paniers and head-baskets; but
the introduction of modern farming methods into Italy

THE SICILIAN COUNTRYSIDE 107

would have an effect equivalent to a visit of plague.
The three million three hundred thousand people who
live from the soil in Sicily, for instance, win for each
his portion of food stuffs by hand labor on the farms
or in the village workshops, where work is traded for
food very often directly; and the introduction of ma-
chinery which would dispense with the labor of more
than half the people would upset the system of divi-
sion of products of the soil and prove a terrible ca-
lamity.

Outside of the number of a few noted vineyards
where there are power plants for wine-making, the
great volume of Sicilian wine, which is strong, of good
nutritious quality and flavor, is produced by hand pro-
cesses. The grapes are gathered in season by men,
women and children, and borne in paniers or baskets
to the trampling-vats, which are often two miles from
the vineyard, and in some instances more. I have seen
a half-dozen little girls, the youngest too small to speak
plainly, the oldest not over eight, going plodding along
in the dust between vineyard and press, with loads of
grapes on their heads.

The grapes are dumped into the stone-built, plastered
trampling-vat, which drains into a butt, and when
enough, say a layer of six inches of thickness, has been
put in, the peasants get in with pants and skirts rolled
up, and tramp the grapes into a pulp. This trampling
is usually given up to old men or women whose sight
is defective, or whose hands are distorted by accident
or rheumatism from years of wine-drinking, and who
are thus not so valuable at picking and carrying grapes.
I remember, at a press near Collesamo, seeing two old
women trampling grapes with their skirts rolled up and
pinned about their hips, and far up on their thighs were

io8 IMPORTED AMERICANS

the purple stains of the fruit. As they tramped they
sang the high, nasal, droning canto of their village.

The pulp is taken out in forms and put into a press
which operates by screw power, the screw being a
huge beam of wood which has had a screw thread
carved on it by hand, and the power is the leverage of
a pole mortised into the top of the upright screw, and
sloping down to where two men can seize it, or a horse,
ox or donkey be hitched to it.

One of the wine-presses in Gualtieri is owned by a
fine old country gentleman by the name of Betto, a
freeholder who has prospered in the heating and forg-
ing of the several iron she has in the community fire;
and after a visit to his press he took us up to his house,
one of the very best in the region, and set before us
wine that was so old it had changed color twice and
was, at the time of uncorking, a pale amber with light-
flecks in it here and there.

If there were spots in the southern provinces on the
peninsula where the irrigation systems were worthy of
note, then indeed did the artificial watering of the soil
in Sicily appear wonderful. In that extremely fertile
spot called the Conca d'Oro "Shell of Gold," which
surrounds Palermo, not only is every natural spring and
stream sought out and redirected, but deep artesian
wells tap the subterranean waters. Where the sides of
the mountains in the interior are terraced far up, in an
effort to increase the area of tillable land, water con-
duits have been hewn out of solid rock in spots, and
streams carried for miles over barren places to moisten a
patch or two of productive soil. Looking on such works
of patience, one can fully realize the hard necessity of the
Sicilian; and one cannot help thinking how much better
it would be for all concerned if the Sicilian peasant,

THE SICILIAN COUNTRYSIDE 109

when he emigrates to the United States, instead of be-
coming a barber, a fruit-peddler, a trencher, or follow-
ing some other of the favorite temporary pursuits
which allow the immigrants to congregate in large cities
or their environs, he should be given an opportunity
to try his irrigating skill on some of the fine undevel-
oped land in the West, where a little carefully applied
water and seed will bring any man a wealth of results
at harvest-time.

I do not think there was a soul of reasoning years
within a radius of several miles of the mountain village
of Gualtieri-Sicamino who did not know that on the
last Tuesday of September, Antonio Squadrito, with a
part of his family, a number of neighbors, and his two
American friends, would be leaving for Naples, to em-
bark thence on the Prin^essin Irene for New York.
When, in the sixth year preceding, Antonio had been
one of a handful of the first emigrants from that sec-
tion, every one, even his own family, had been dubious
and pessimistic about the venture. Since then more
than one tenth of the population has followed him,
and any remaining pessimism was restrained, and
those who were too poor to go, too old or too well
situated to take new chances, vented openly expres-
sions of envy.

From San Filipo, a near-by village, where almost
half of the people have the dreaded eye-disease, tra-
choma, an old man hobbled over to Gualtieri to ask if
there was not some way that he could go to America.
He had a nephew earning $1.20 a day in the mines in
Belmont County, Ohio, and he felt sure that if he got
there his nephew would find him work enough to do.
He said he could sell his few belongings for five hun-
dred lire, enough to take himself and his wife to Ohio.

no IMPORTED AMERICANS

I looked at his gaping, granulated lids and told him
that he could never go. He sat with his head bent on
the top of his staff for a longtime in silence, then, with
working features and trembling hands, rose and said
good-bye. A day or so later a very brown, shy little
girl brought over three fine squashes, a present to us
from the old pair.

I was somewhat concerned when I learned that Con-
cetta Fomica, a beautiful young girl of sixteen, a rela-
tive of the Squadrito family, who was to go with us,
was the daughter of a San Filipian and had lived in the
afflicted village. She had some slight inflammation of
the eyes, but it did not seem to be trachoma, and Dr.
Giunta, the village medico, assured me that, though
her father had it, she did not. Since the disease is
highly contagious by contact of hand, towel, handker-
chief or anything that the head touches, and there are
few oculists who claim to be able to effect permanent
cures and none who are able to remove the cicatrices
from the inside of the lids, the causes for concern can be
easily understood. There were only two cases in Gual-
tieri, so Dr. Giunta said, and one was her father. He
is blind almost half the time. Those who are known
to have the disease are required to have separate toilet
articles for their own use.

Antonio, as the actual head of the Squadrito family,
was in hot water constantly over the matter of who
should go to America and who should not. All of
the remaining members of the family, with the possi-
ble exception of the eldest daughter, Giovanina, and
the mother, were wild to come to America and join
the three brothers at their little barber shop in Stoning-
ton, Conn. Giovanina alone was looking forward to
the day of her marriage with her soldier lover. The

THE SICILIAN COUNTRYSIDE 111

small boys were simply insane on the subject of
America. One of them approached my wife with an
air of great mystery one day and confided to her a
plan whereby he would himself borrow the money to
buy his ticket, and she could hide him under her shawl
and bring him through. But a great reversal in the
family plans came when Giovanni, the father, who, re-
membering his two hard years in America, announced
that he had come home to stay. He said he liked
home and village life too well to go back. I told him
that I believed the restless germ of the American spirit
lurked somewhere in his system and that he would
change his mind. This has proved entirely true. As
I write, a letter lies before me in which he says that he
wants to come back. Home comforts and familiar
pleasures and labors are all right, but he "can't
stand it."

When the father had so decided, there was no ques-
tion as to whether the mother should come, and the
small boys' chances were effaced. Nicola decided to
stay by his prosperous smithy, Maria clung to her
mother, and Vincenzo, who had a cartelaginous
growth over his left eye, was told to wait till his eye
had been operated upon and then he might come. Of
course, there was a small storm, especially from the
younger members of the household; but Antonio
poured oil on the troubled waters by promising to
return next year and take every one who would go.
It was a treacherous compromise, and since the father
has changed his mind I believe this year will see
nearly the entire family in America.

We were to be joined at Messina by Giuseppe Car-
dillo and several other people, and by the Papalia fam-
ily from Monforte-Spadafora; but our party as finally

112 IMPORTED AMERICANS

constituted had the following people from Gualtieri,
and throughout the trip they continued to be our party
proper and were directly under our care:

Antonio Squadrito, Camela Squadrito and her child,
Caterina; Mrs. Squadrito's brother, Giovanni Pulejo, a
barber; Felicia Pulejo, a nephew; Concetta Fomica,
the pretty young cousin; Antonio Nastasia, a sixteen-
year-old boy neighbor; Gaetano Mullura, in the same
category; Nicola Curro, aged twenty-seven, an inti-
mate friend of the family, a finished cabinet-maker;
Nunzio Giunta, son of a prominent family of the vil-
lage, a big, powerful fellow of twenty-three, just out
of five years' service in the police or Carabineers;
Antonio Genino, twenty-one years of age, a cheese-
maker going to a cousin in Philadelphia; and Salvatore
Niceta, Benedetto Runzio, Luciano Sofia and Salvatore
Damico, four farmer-boys from Gualtieri-Socosa, a de-
tached village of the community, all going to the Banca
Gelantado in Philadelphia, destined for the mines.

These boys afforded a very fine example of the
latest methods of evading the contract-labor law.
They had no contract in writing, merely the letter of
an uncle of one of them promising work if they would
come. He was not to employ them, but he would
turn them over to men who would. This is the
method by which scores of big corporations in Amer-
ica, which dare not import Italian laborers by reason
of the law on this matter, do it by making the contract
here with a relative or friend of some group of men in
an Italian community, and the relative or friend brings
them over. The men are instructed to answer the
question as to whether they have been promised work
or not by saying they have not. Out of 1903*5 ap-
proximate million emigrants, only 1,086 were refused

THE SICILIAN COUNTRYSIDE 113

admittance as alien contract laborers. One large in-
dustrial corporation at Buffalo, N. Y., alone received
nearly half that many, and those who passed success-
fully through to other parts of the country can be
easily imagined. I do not hesitate to say that it is im-
possible to defeat this fraud by any operations on this
side of the sea.

In a later chapter there will be shown the outlines of
a plan which will offset the weaknesses of the enforce-
ment of the alien contract-labor law, and I shall throw
light in numbers of places on the true meaning of
"assisted emigration."

The first official procedure of the many and intricate
ones necessary for the departure of emigrants and
their admission to the United States was the obtaining
of the passports for the male members of the party.
The women and children are entered on the passport
of some man of their family or party. The first step
is getting the birth certificate from the secretary of the
municipality in which one is born, so Antonio, the
elder Pulejo, Concetta's father, young Giunta, Curro,
and the father of the Socosa boys went before Gia-
como Marini, and when he had consulted the register
and found that all had been duly born in Gualtieri,
birth-certificates were issued, signed by himself and
the president of the municipality, or mayor. As for my-
self, wishing to return as an Italian to America and not
as an American, a birth-certificate was issued to me as
having been born net commune di Londra, son of
Paolo Brandi and Migone Caterina. I regret to say it
was necessary to take undue advantage of the old sec-
retary to carry my point. Precious little good it did
me, though.

These birth-certificates were then forwarded by

114 IMPORTED AMERICANS

Carmelo Merlino, the shoemaker steamship agent, who
was on a high wave of prosperity through sending so
many people at once, to one Mazzulo, in Messina,
whose nominal duties are to take the birth-certificates
before the questura or police headquarters of Messina
district, where the personal record of each man in the
district is kept for both military conscription and re-
serve, as well as criminal vigilance purposes. If there
was anything in that record which would cause the
questor to think that one of our party should be refused
permission to depart, he would not issue the passport,
and the emigrant could not leave the country, as each
person must have a passport in which is an identifying
description of the bearer so complete as to make an
exchange of passports impossible with the careful
scrutiny which is given them by the Italian police of-
ficials in Naples.

As things fell out, none of our party were refused
the very necessary passport except myself. The ac-
curacy of the Italian system is shown by this. I was
refused because they had no record of me; and my
birth-certificate was returned as irregular, and the local
police would have arrested me if I had persisted in
trying that method.

Now, all of this goes to prove one of the most im-
portant facts in connection with Italian emigration:
that the questura of each district is slowly and effec-
tually clearing the district of its criminal class by
dumping the lot into North and South America, the
most dangerous coming to the United States as the
best field for their further operations.

Here is the syllogism:

Since American police records and prison statistics,
especially those of the United States secret service,

Giacomo Marini, the Municipal Secretary — Nicola Squad-
rito at Work ( Carmelo Merlino at the right)

THE SICILIAN COUNTRYSIDE 115

show large and increasing numbers of Italian criminals
in this country ;

And since the mass of these can enter only by
immigration;

And since the immigrant must have a passport from
the chief of his local police district;

And since every criminal's record is kept in the dis-
trict in which he was born, and he must go there to
get the birth-certificate on which he gets his passport, —

Then these thousands of passports issued annually
to criminals are given by chiefs of police who know
the records of the men who are receiving them, and
are thus deliberately ridding their districts of them to
save themselves trouble and increase their reputation
for efficiency.

That those secret instructions which are issued from
Rome to the chief of each district advise any such
procedure I do not believe. They do advise, so I have
been reliably informed, that passports be not issued to
prostitutes easy of detection, or to persons over forty-
five not accompanied by sons, inasmuch as both
classes are very nearly sure to be turned back and to
become a matter of expense to the government. That
is the bugaboo of Italian statesmen, — expense.

In my own case I knew I would have no difficulty
concerning my passport until I came to the gate in the
police-office in Naples; then I must have a passport
either American or Italian. Any chance of getting an
Italian one had been quickly shattered; and yet, if I
went on the ship's manifest as an American I would
not be entering the United States in the desired r61e.
The solution of the difficulty was not reached till we
were in Naples.

When Antonio and the others had their passports,

ii6 IMPORTED AMERICANS

then the tickets were issued to them by the agents, and
not before, the lot being returned to Gualtieri by post.
Now there was no turning back. Camela began to
waver, and hourly there was some new dread to suf-
fuse her eyes with tears.

One day Antonio Nastasia's father went to Messina,
taking some of the money which he had labored hard
as a tinsmith and sheet-iron worker to accumulate,
and spent nearly all of it in buying clothes for little
Antonio to wear. Curro spent a month's wages on a
new suit. Giunta's relatives prepared him a consider-
able wardrobe, and altogether nearly half as much as
was needed to pay the passage of the entire party was
spent in buying Italian clothes to wear to America.
The senselessness of this proceeding is plain when it
is said that few of these new clothes were worn after
the first day or two in the States.

Something else equally ill-advised was the making
of huge trunks by Nicola Squadrito and others, in
which the families of the departing ones packed
quantities of every conceivable sort of supply, just as
if the voyagers were going to a new, wild land to
begin life as best they could. Despite the protestations
of Antonio, my wife and myself, Camela, crammed
into huge boxes two sets of heavy mattresses with all
the accompanying bedding; large cans of pomidoro ;
olive oil; sticks on which dried figs were impaled;
flasks of wine; forms of cheese; old clothes; and cook-
ing-utensils, many of which were new; and Concetta
Fomica's mother repeated the performance. Enough
excess baggage, freight and customs duty were paid,
before we were through, on these big encumbrances
to replace the whole lot twice over in America.

The last days were at hand. We were to leave

THE SICILIAN COUNTRYSIDE 117

on Tuesday before dawn. On Saturday afternoon a
request came from an old woman up the valley that we
see her — she being unable to come to us — before we
departed. As we followed the stony torrente path to
her home, her story was told to us. Twenty-three
years ago, when she was a bride of little more than a
year and a mother but a month, her husband had gone
to America, the first man to emigrate from all that
region, nearly eighteen years before Antonio Squadrito
and the others had started the flood. She had received
one letter in which he said he had changed his name
to Frank Smith, as nobody had any patience with his
Italian name. She never heard from him after that,
and after her one boy died she continued to live alone
in the little house Francesco had built for her and
waited for Francesco's return. For a living she worked
in the fields in summer, and in the early autumn in the
vineyards and the lemon, olive, and orange orchards.

We found her spinning with the old distaff in the sun-
shine before her door. She set before us such humble
hospitality as her hut afforded, and then told us she
wanted us to begin a search in America for a Frank
Smith, and she desired to turn over her savings, thirty-
two lire ($6), to defray the expenses. She could not
understand why we would not take it. It may be
that these lines will fall beneath the eye of a man who
long since left all his Italianism behind him and is now
a thoroughgoing American and no longer Francesco.
If so, I bid him remember that there is a faithful
woman waiting for him in the Sicilian hills.

CHAPTER IX

THE DEPARTURE

AS the sun was sinking this Saturday, the bells
in the tower of the principal church began an
unwonted clangor, and I was told that the
Squadrito relatives had paid for a special service at
vespers for the safe journey and prosperity of our party.
As we wound along our way to the village we
could see little groups of people, some in holiday
dress, and others, for the most part, in the clothes
in which they left the fields, the wine-presses,
the cheese-shops, the smithies and the orchards. As
we entered the square we met one of the priests, a
benign old man, one of the truest and best types of
the sincere rural clergy I have ever seen. After taking
a pinch of snuff, he offered the box to me with a
quizzical smile, knowing full well the un-Americanism
of snuff. There was a hasty exchange of compli-
ments and well-wishes, then he passed on to the
sacristy.

Jules Breton has caught and put on canvas, more
than once, the spirit of peasant piety which pervaded
that vespers; the air of restful, provincial, old-world
religious fixity, breathing through the richly colored
and wonderfully picturesque scene in that ancient
church.

Around the tallow-encrusted base of the figure of
San Francesco, the patron saint of the village, flared the
great yellow candles. A few glimmered on the altar.

THE DEPARTURE 119

The figure stood on a pedestal a little to one side of
the centre of the church. To the left, kneeling on
the worn stones of the floor, or sitting on tiny rush-
bottomed chairs, were the closely grouped women,
some few in the coveted black-lace prayer-shawls,
but the mass in the solid-colored commoner ones,
drawn over the head and spreading out into a cone
around the kneeling or sitting figure. These shawls,
dark red, green, or yellow, treasured among the poor,
made that night in the candle-light a softened color-
scheme that is indescribable. To the right were the
men and boys, clad for the most part in the baggy
homespun worn in the fields, though here and there
some villager boasted a suit from the tailor's hands.

As we entered, an old man with furrowed face,
horn spectacles and raucous voice, and a slender,
Raphael-faced boy, both in vestments, were chanting
from well-thumbed books held into the light of the
candles about the saint's figure. Overhead in the
choir the old organ toiled uncertainly through the mu-
sic of the service, and ever and anon the boy took
up and rang the tinkling silver bell.

His clear, superb soprano voice was in fine contrast
with that of the elder singer, but the whole scene, the
portion of the service at the altar, the muffled murmur
of the people repeating the forms, the rustle and stir
as they knelt or rose, the shifting of the shadows on
the wall, was all so strange, almost barbaric, yet so
harmonious and beautiful that its very detail was
evasive.

When the service was ended, the people, without
haste or without form, gathered around the priest
while he christened a tiny wailing infant, held up by
the midwife, with the proud father at her side.

120 IMPORTED AMERICANS

They named it Giuseppe. Yet another to join the
millions of Giuseppes, Giacomos and Giovannis!

As we left the church, the father of the child fol-
lowed us and bade us come to his house, where the
christening was being celebrated. Through the dark,
narrow streets we wended our way to the other end
of the town, climbed the stone stairs to an over-
crowded upper room, and spent a politely sufficient
length of time eating anise cakes and drinking sweet
wine.

With the tact of womankind, my wife had brought
some trinkets of American origin as a gift for the
child, whereat the assemblage beamed its appreciation,
and just before we left the father said to me aside, as
if it was a secret he was keeping from his wife: "If I
can save twenty more lire, the next one will be born
in Pittsburg, praise the Holy Mother."

At home all the favored neighbors and relatives had
gathered for a dance. The large room on the ground
floor of the Casa Squadrito was ringed around with a
double row of guests. Whole families sat together,
on the stairway were seated the youngsters already
drowsy; crowding around the wide door opening into
the street were the unbidden, but none the less inter-
ested and curious. The head of the Mannino family,
weary with the labors of his sixty years and the
fatigue of a stiff, home-laundered collar, was nodding
before the music struck up, occasionally raising his
head to blink at the light solemnly and to make sure
none of the young men were unduly near his daughter,
the heiress of his hard-got wealth.

Every one who had any heavy gold rings, bracelets
or brooches, or any of the pretentious gold-mounted
strands of old coral, which are handed down so care-

THE DEPARTURE 121

fully from mother to daughter, had them on, for a dis-
play of gold ornaments is a sure sign of rural social
distinction. Feet that were rarely shod were now
encased in scarpi made by Carmelo Merlino and his
fellow craftsmen in the village, and dress among
women in the throng varied from a department store
ready-made cloth gown sent home from America to a
ragged working frock, the wearer of which kept her
shoeless and stockingless feet shyly tucked out of
sight.

All were awaiting our arrival, for Antonio, who was
with us, was host as well as chief musician. A home-
made acetylene lamp, of the blacksmith brother's con-
triving, was lighted and set high up on a bracket,
throwing every object in the room, even to the boys
perched in the transom, into sharp relief. The mando-
lins and guitars hanging on the wall were taken down,
and with a skilful, brilliant prelude — for he is an ex-
cellent mandolin-player — Antonio swept into one of the
stirring, if monotonous time-honored tarantelle airs.

Even though eyes were dancing in young faces all
around the room, all were too shy to take the floor till,
Giovanina and Maria Squadrito urging into acquiescence
two of the Di Bianca girls, the four formed a square
and began a swaying, pirouetting movement, preced-
ing the whirling and crossing over with the accompany-
ing snapping of the fingers in imitation of the Castanet,
and the smiting of the tambourines. Round and round
they whirled, across and back, first one set of partners,
then the other, the assemblage applauding a little shyly
as yet.

The tarantelle is called after the black spiders about
Taranto, whose dangerous bites killed so many people
early in the fifteenth century that many odd cures

122 IMPORTED AMERICANS

were proclaimed, and one that was officially advocated
was music and dancing. I do not know whether the
tarantelle dance which was evolved did the spider-
victims any good, but a fanatical wave of dancing
swept over the peninsula and the surrounding island,
and the tarantelle became a fixture among the folk-
customs of the southern provinces.

When the young girls were weary, an effort was
made to get the young men out and into action, but all
of them seemed to be in the throes of a monstrous diffi-
dence. Little Giovanni Squadrito, Jr., and his small
brother Tono were not thus afflicted, and dragged out
the Di Bianca boy, a handsome fellow, dressed in the
best Roman fashion, and another youngster who,
though a child in years, had massive work-scarred
hands. The four gave an exhibition of dancing that
was delightful indeed, and when Giovanni and Tono
went skipping about, their hobnailed shoes scratching
and clattering on the tiles, their mother's face beamed
with real pride. Although very weary with a hard
day's work preparing for the departure, she was among
the brightest and merriest of the company.

Then Nicola, the blacksmith, and the shoemaker
steamship agent, persuaded a third loutish youth to
take the floor, but a fourth dancer was lacking. At
the instant when the last of the other men had refused
to take the floor as yet, the village butcher appeared in
the door and was hailed with acclaim by those who
knew his terpsichorean gifts. He glided into his place
on the tiles, drew tighter the knot in his neckerchief,
ran his hand through his Saturday-night stubble of
beard, tossed his hat to a friend and entered upon the
most startling, dashing, withal graceful and self-con-
tained feats in dance movements I have ever seen.

THE DEPARTURE 123

He was on his tiptoes the greater part of the time and
gave a perfect reproduction of the traditional dance.

Then something happened that is rare — the men and
women danced together, waltzing; and when, after a
number of varied dances, tarantelle and square, a
dance by the old folks was called for, the first person
to respond was Mrs. Squadrito. In vain the people of
his own age endeavored to get the slumber-smitten
Mannino on his feet. At last Giovanina, who had
been dancing almost constantly, filled the vacant place
among the elder people, and the music broke forth once
more. 1 caught my wife's eyes turned to me in
amazement, and I replied in kind. Caterina Squadrito,
with fifty-five years of hard labor and the bearing and
rearing of ten children behind her, danced a long round
of the tarantelle with an ease, grace and abandon
which put to shame the efforts of her youngest
daughter. When she was gyrating and swaying in
the middle of the floor, with all the mass of people
about keeping time to the music, laughing and ap-
plauding, that room presented a picture which I shall
never forget.

Not long after this the mothers who were holding
their sleeping children in their arms grew too weary
of the burdens and started for home. The others
made haste to follow and filed by us, bowing formally
as they offered their hands, wishing us good-night
and bon riposo.

Sunday morning bright and early the entire family
began that weekly process of cleaning and dressing up
which is, 1 believe, general in all rural districts of
Christian countries. Little Ina was arrayed in a pretty
little white dress, with a long white veil, and on her
head was set a wreath of artificial leaves and white

124 IMPORTED AMERICANS

flowers. Going by in the street were others. It being
her last Sunday, all of her little friends put on their
festa dress in her honor, and a procession of the chil-
dren was held from a church in another quarter of the
village to the one on the square.

In the afternoon Camela took little Ina by the hand
and set off for some place by herself. I noticed that a
sort of solemnity pervaded the household; that she
was crying as she went; that no one offered to ac-
company her; and that she carried a large bouquet of
flowers. 1 soon learned that she had climbed the hill
behind the town to the graveyard on its summit, to
spend the last hours she could ever spend beside the
graves of her father and her mother.

There were renewed streams of visitors later in the
day, and at night a pleasant gathering at the home of
the Giuntas, where we were shown, among other
things, a very fine collection of old jewelry, inherited
by our hostess from an aunt. In this company there
were fewer people, and they were more select as
village society goes than the large gathering at the
Squadritos' the night before. Antonio, being very
popular in the village, and quite democratic despite
his prosperity, had asked humble and pretentious
alike to his home, and neither caste gave a sign, such as
they would have given on the street, that they were
not of the same strata. There are some very fine and
delicate things in Italian social customs. Before we
left we were bidden to a little garden party which
Mrs. Giunta had planned for us on the afternoon of
the next day. It was to be held on a scrap of an estate
owned by the family, situated up the torrente a short
distance.

That night, after we had returned home, we were

Ina and Her Friends in Procession to the Church for Fare-
well Blessings

THE DEPARTURE 125

serenaded by a troupe of the village male vocalists,
who wandered about until near dawn. The boy,
Salvatore Vazzana, whom I have mentioned as singing
in the church, sang "Luna, O Luna," with a triple
guitar accompaniment. The serenaders were then
standing in the white moonlight at a point down by
the torrente wall, so that in the stillness the clear,
sweet voice and the throbbing, twanging compagna-
mento carried to every part of the town and came back
faintly from the farther hills.

The Giuntas are a large family. All the present
heads of separate households are the children of one
aged woman, still living in Gualtieri, who has given
birth to twenty-two, all told. Most of these are living,
and nearly all have prospered. One is the only man
in Italy who can stop a government train, even the
Brindisi express, in any spot beside the track where
he may appear. He shows his badge as inspector-
general, and the train pulls up and takes him on. This
attribute was related to us by every fresh group of
people we met in the community, and he is considered
by them to be a very wonderful man indeed. Our
host, on the Sunday evening before mentioned, is one
of the few men who own land about Gualtieri or in the
district controlled by the Duke of Avarna.

Monday afternoon he and his wife and one or two
other guests called for us at the house, and, accom-
panied by Antonio, Giovanina, Maria, Camela, little
Ina, Giovanni, Jr., and Tono, we walked over the tor-
rente path, in the blazing sun, to the gate of one of his
farms of garden size. At the gate we met his brother,
the village doctor, bound ahorse to see some pa-
tients higher up in the mountains. After looking
over the splendidly cultivated place and inspecting the

126 IMPORTED AMERICANS

irrigation devices, very old and clumsy, but none the
less effective, we sat down to a repast of fruits of
more sorts than I can remember and name. The
photograph of the party in the garden tells its own
story. If all landowners in Italy dealt as mercifully
with their tenants as our host appeared to deal with
his people, there would be a different story to tell of
southern Italy to-day.

Monday evening was a time of turmoil. First of all
the great mass of trunks was got off to the station
before dark. Then those who had delayed till the last
minute to bring messages for friends and to bid us
farewell appeared. I took all the messages, but drew
the line at presents for relatives in Missouri, especially
twenty-pound forms of cheese and five-gallon cans of
olive oil. In the Squadrito household there was too
much excitement for great grief, only now and
then one of the members would break out with a wail
and throw his or her arms around some one of those
who were to go. By eleven o'clock everything was
packed up, and Antonio mandatorily dismissed all the
neighbors and sent everybody to bed. As the silence
of the outer night crept into the house, there became
audible the sobbing of the poor old mother as she lay
thinking of the near separation from her own flesh
and blood.

The heads of the weary and worn seemed scarcely
to have touched their pillows before awakening voices
rang in the house and street, the feeling of dread, chill
exhaustion and discomfort that goes with sleep-break-
ing at one o'clock seemed to rest numbingly on every
one. The tumultuous grief of the night before had
given place to a sort of hushed woe. A short time to
dress, a bite to eat, then into the dark, narrow streets

THE DEPARTURE 127

with sleep-heavy eyes, to meet a crowd of hundreds
come to see the party off. It is wonderful how little
noise that concourse made as it moved out of the
square, over the ancient bridge, to the beginning of the
mountain road.

The parting with the mother and sisters occurred
at the door of the Squadrito home. The mother was
so overcome with her sorrow that, shaken with dry
sobs and murmuring broken blessings, her daughters,
unable to speak themselves from weeping, loosened
her arms from about Antonio and Camela and bore
her to her couch.

At the edge of the village a group of donkeys was
in readiness. Here the crowd paused. Not more than
seventy-five elected to walk the seven miles to the
station and back, and there were few relatives among
them. Antonio's father was as completely broken
down as if he was giving his favorite son and the
others to the grave, instead of their departing for a
happy land.

It was with difficulty that those natural leaders
among the people effected the final separations, but at
last, in the starlight, the two groups drew apart on
the highway, the cavalcade with its foot retinue
ascending along the face of the hill, the great, black
mass of the crowd grouped about the end of the
bridge shouting farewells. Some one struck up a
farewell song, several voices joined in, among them
the Vazzana boy's clear soprano; but one by one they
broke, and soon the song failed and ceased; and as
the procession turned the corner that hid the town
from view the long file of those left behind could be
dimly seen moving back to the darkened homes.

It were ill indeed not to speak of "Bella." The day

128 IMPORTED AMERICANS

before, when donkeys were being hired for the ride to
the station, I had been struck by the gentle and affec-
tionate way in which she stood beside her owner's
young wife, and had marked her for my own. Ex-
perience with the arrny mule of Missouri extraction and
his despised cousin, the Mexican burro, should have
made me less trustful.

For a half hour we cantered along in the dark, the
babel of talk all about us. At the rougher places I held
my camera carefully balanced on Bella's neck in front
of me, in order that it be not banged against projecting
rocks or by other laden beasts pressing close alongside
at times. When one wishes to urge a Sicilian donkey
forward, one kicks him in the ribs and shouts high and
nasally :

"Ah— a— a— ah!"

We came to a sharp bend in the road, where it turned
over a high bridge crossing a deep ravine. Bella heard
the braying of the lead donkey already across the bridge
and on the other side of the ravine, and suddenly,
without consulting me, turned aside and plunged, like
a goat, from rock to rock down into the blackness of
the ravine. I had been in the tail of the train, and no
one missed me, I knew. She would not be checked
on her downward course; in fact I was too busy cling-
ing to the precious camera and holding on, to attempt
to argue with her. The limbs of olive-trees and the
raking thorns of the mura swept us from stem to stern.
If she knew where she was going I felt very glad, for
I certainly did not. High and faint above me I could
hear the voices of the party. I was wondering what
my chances were for getting out without a broken
neck, when suddenly my fair beast struck level ground,
and in an instant more a steep ascent. All sounds to

THE DEPARTURE 129

show that the party was still in the vicinity had died
away. The donkey went up that precipitous slope
with an action that seemed nearly " hand over hand,"
and, holding the strap of the camera in my teeth, I
merely clung desperately about her neck. A stone
loosened by her hoofs went crashing, down, down,
down, and a cold sweat broke out on my brow.

But in a short time, without one misstep or one min-
ute's uncertainty, she made the climb, came out into a
level open space, and stood stock still, looking to the
left, and working her ears. I bent down and touched the
ground with my fingers, encountering the warm, thick
dust of the highway, and in a moment more heard the
voices of our party as they turned a bend. Bella had
taken a short cut across the ravine. Not having missed
us they did not wonder how we had got so far ahead,
and I said nothing about the matter.

Soon we wound through the slumbering town of
Pagia. A head was now and then thrust out to mur-
mur a sleepy " Bona notte," and when some one of us
answered, "We go to America," there was always a
hearty, " Bon -viaggio e bona for tuna."

Just beyond the village we heard something, en-
countered often before, but never under such eerie sur-
roundings. Somewhere in the paths higher up, a shrill
young voice raised a wild, plaintive song, and at the
end of the first line held the note long drawn out and
rounded, though nasal, while many other voices, men,
women and children, struck in on a major chord and held
it as long as they had breath. This was repeated
over and over. It was a band of peasants already on
their way to their distant work, singing in the plagal
modes, in the darkness and loneliness of the hills.

CHAPTER X

FROM SICILY TO NAPLES

IT was not long before we wound down to the little
station, and day began to break in the east, turn-
ing the cloud of vapor over Stromboli into the
semblance of a huge pink rose growing up out of the
island volcano. Many of the people from the country
about were gathered to see their own friends off, for
there was quite a party by this time. Soon the train
crept around the coast from Milazzo and brought up
with a jerk and a blast of the conductor's horn. Here
farewells were brief. I heard one of the Socosa boys'
father cursing the train because it was the agent of the
separation from his son, and then out of the hurly-
burly came a slamming of compartment doors, cries of
"Prontef Pronte!" another blast of the horn, and
we were hurried away to Messina.

It was at the station that Antonio's first wrestling-
match with the mountain of the party's baggage oc-
curred. At Santa Lucia there had been abundant will-
ing hands to pile it on the train, and no other baggage
with which to confuse it. Also, nothing had been said
about excess charges. At Messina it was ripped open
by the city customs officials, then hustled from place
to place till at last it was dispatched to the North Ger-
man Lloyd office, and Antonio emerged from the en-
counter a dripping wreck of his former immaculate
self. When we next saw it, it was piled into a barge,
and standing guard over it was a uniformed govern-

FROM SICILY TO NAPLES 131

ment official who begged piteously before he departed
for enough money to buy his dinner, and was well
enough satisfied with thirty centesimi (about six cents).

I have previously described the operations of the
questura of Messina. Passports in hand, the entire
party joined the great mass of people from all parts of
eastern Sicily crowded into the steamship broker's of-
fice. Here each person was compelled to make a dec-
laration, which declaration answers the twenty-two
questions that are propounded regularly at Ellis Island.
When the Socosa boys, in answer to the question as
to whether they had work promised or not, said that
they had, the agent advised them to answer this ques-
tion in the negative. When Giunta and Curro said they
expected no one to meet them, they were advised to get
some one, and so on through the group. The steam-
ship broker's agent, in filling out the blanks of this dec-
laration, thus fortified the emigrant in the weak places
of his case for admission, and if the emigrant is turned
back he has no claim for damages against the brokers.
Numbers of suits were formerly brought and won, but
under the present system none have been successful,
and in cases where the returned emigrant is able to pay
for the passage on his deportation the broker can force
him to do so.

It will be noticed that I have used the term broker
instead of steamship agent. The explanation will be a
revelation to most people in the United States, for I
found not long since that officials high in the Bureau of
Immigration were not aware of the following facts,
which is another bit of proof of how weak our system
of dealing with immigration from this side of the
water is. The steamship company does not book the
third-class passengers. Emigration is promoted by

132 IMPORTED AMERICANS

sub-agents in the villages, such as Carmelo Merlino in
Gualtieri, who operate under district agents such as
Colajanni in Messina, who are selected, appointed and
bonded by the Italian government and not by the steam-
ship company. They are responsible to the govern-
ment and not to the steamship company. They de-
liver their passengers at so much per head to the steam-
ship company at the foot of the plank, and a percent-
age of their receipts finds its way to the government
treasury. They are required to have their offices in
what is called a judicial town, where there is a questura
and the operations of the ticket brokerage system and
the police passports dovetail nicely.

The process of clearing all papers, baggage receipts,
tickets to the steamer to Naples, tickets to America
from Naples, was passed through by our party, and
then, it being but little after noon and the hour for go-
ing aboard being four o'clock, they scattered. Many
went to homes of relatives in Messina for a final visit.
Several of the boys spent unwarrantable sums of their
precious money in buying ugly looking knives with
which to face the dangers that they had read so much
about in the papers, cheap, worthless watches, and
clothes that would only be thrown away ; and every-
where a group passed some of those parasites of the
port who prey upon emigrants and make an effort to
wheedle or swindle them out of a bit of silver.

On my first visit to Messina I had the pleasure of in-
timate knowledge of the discovery of a bold fraud, and
the arrest and punishment of the thief. He was a
man of fair appearance, who had for three years made
a practice of stopping emigrants just before they were
about to go aboard the steamer by means of the small
boats in the harbor, and demanding if they had had

DEPARTURE FROM GUALT1ERI

" Declaring" in the Messina Office — Party's Baggage on

Lighter — Friends, Neighbors and Relatives

FROM SICILY TO NAPLES 133

their tickets stamped "by the American doctor."
The frightened emigrant, knowing that somewhere in
the process he would encounter "the American doc-
tor," to him an object of dread, would reply that he
had not. The party would then be taken to a small
office in an alleyway opening off the water front and
a stamp put on the ticket for which the victims would
be charged three francs sixty, about seventy cents
each. Mr. Charles M. Caughy, the American consul
at Messina, caught this fellow and saw to it that he
was soundly punished. Our party escaped with a
few minor mishaps, thanks to the vigilance of Antonio
and myself. One of the boys fell a victim to a fake
street dentist who had a carnage, a set of tools and a
professional air. He related the sufferings with tooth-
ache experienced by emigrants on the Atlantic, and ad-
vised the extraction of all bad teeth. One old woman
from Catania had three taken out at a franc each.
While I was trying to get a photograph of the fakir
one of our boys got into the carriage, and the dentist
was so eager to have me get a good, full view of his
face that he yanked out one of the boy's perfectly
good teeth. I am glad the film got torn.

We lunched in a little restaurant off the Via Um-
berto, entertained by really good music from a beggar
violinist who was accompanied by a woman and little
girl, both of them cursed by trachoma.

We were disappointed in meeting the Papalia family
from Montforte-Spadafora, in fact they came on the
next steamer, and for some reason Giuseppe Cardillo's
father had decided that Giuseppe and his party should
wait; thus we lost at the outset some interesting
members from our group as planned.

I improved the opportunity to complete some in-

134 IMPORTED AMERICANS

vestigations in Messina concerning the smuggling of
trachomatic emigrants, and will state what I learned
in a later chapter, where the information is collected.

The fine Navigazione Generale steamer Reina Mar-
gherita was the one on which we were to travel to
Naples. She went first to Reggio di Calabrie to get
the crowd there gathered from Greece, Syria, Turkey,
Apulia and Calabria. There were not many of the
Orientals, and a large part of them expected to sail on
the Citta di Napoli, of the La Veloce Line, leaving
Naples before we did on the Prin^essin Irene. I went
over and saw them come aboard, as some of our
friends would be there.

Some gay parties came down to the dock in carretas
and on foot, singing and beating tambourines, and
one of these brought Gaetano Disalvo, a boy from
Scilla going to join his uncle in Buffalo.

One of the boys with Di Salvo was a lithe lad of
nineteen who had been a sword-fisherman, a very
dangerous occupation pursued in the midsummer
months off Scilla. With old Francesco Palmi was his
daughter Paolina, a true Calabrese type, and one of
the prettiest girls of her class we saw while in Italy.
She had been a flower-worker, and was going to New
York to marry a man whom she had not seen since
she was a little girl, but who had secured "a very fine
employment for her paying twenty-eight lire ($5.60)
per week."

When the steamer put back across the Straits to
Messina, there was a grand rush to get the emigrants
and their baggage aboard. The boatmen who took
our party out, though they had been paid by the
steamship broker, all such things being included in
the 2OO-lire ticket, demanded and succeeded in getting

FROM SICILY TO NAPLES 135

two lire for their ferrying. We were in the first
rapids of the systematic extortion through which the
poor emigrant passes on his way from home to Ellis
Island, where it stops so suddenly that he is mystified.

It was a striking scene as our last boat put off from
the quay, leaving little Antonio Nastasia's father,
Nicola Squadrito, Giunta's friends and a few more
who had come from Gualtieri, standing in a weeping
group in the midst of the many hundreds, waving
hats and shouting, "Bon viaggio, bon viaggiof"

It was a rough-and-tumble fight to get aboard with
the baggage, and the difficulties were increased by the
unnecessary and purposeless brutality of the ship's
stewards. Here began the blows, the jerkings about
and the hustlings, which never ceased throughout the
whole process till the poor, ignorant people, driven
and herded like cattle, were in the shelter of Ellis
Island.

There was a brigadier of police aboard, and when
the women had gone below into their compartment
and we were trying to secure beds in the men's
quarters, he followed the women and offered them
insults which make my blood boil as I think of it.
When I learned of it he had left the ship.

At last we were settled into our places on the lumpy
jute mattresses covered with coarse, dirty bagging,
which served as the bedding in the double-tiered iron
bunks arranged in blocks eight or nine wide in the
middle of the ship, with supplementary rows along
the sides.

No attempt was made to feed us, and, anticipating
such a condition, we had fortunately brought food
with us. Despite all their discomforts, the wilting
heat and the foul smells, I do not remember ever hav-

136 IMPORTED AMERICANS

ing seen a happier crowd of people. On every hand
musical instruments were out, and groups were sing-
ing or chattering like magpies.

In the dusk the beautiful steamer glided out of the
harbor by the scores of little groups on the quay at
its mouth, and headed up the Straits of Messina for the
Bay of Naples, twelve hours away.

While we were on the forecastle head, I noticed
little Disalvo come up from below with a long,
twisted-up, slender, newspaper in his hands. For a
long time he stood by the rail intently watching the
shore. When we were off Scilla he lit a match in the
shelter of a ventilator and lighted his improvised torch,
and I realized that he was going to try to signal his
friends on shore. I looked to the land and saw a light
moving up and down near a cottage south of the town
where I knew he lived. But his answer was a failure
and nearly a catastrophe. The strong wind caught
the first blaze of the paper and literally rent the burn-
ing torch apart, sweeping the burning fragments aft
the length of the ship. Fires were narrowly avoided in
two places, and the first officer came down from the
bridge and read the horror-smitten boy a terrific lecture.

Far into the night we lay en deck, dreading to
go below into the reeking atmosphere there. When
we did at last, the tumult of crying babies, of people
who could not sleep and so essayed to play harmon-
icas and sing, was almost unbearable. The rule of
men and women being separated had not been en-
forced, and so Antonio and I stayed near the women
of our party for their protection, — not from the other
passengers, but from the ship's people. At last dawn
came, and the haggard look on my wife's face told me
what she had passed through.

FROM SICILY TO NAPLES 137

When we went on deck we were within sight of
Capri, and two hours later we slid under the shadow
of Vesuvius into the beautiful bay of Naples, and
when we had snuggled in beside the Palermo steamer
at the municipal quay, unloading its throng of
emigrants before the custom-house, we, too, were
dumped off in the hot sun and left for hours in a broil-
ing heat to await our turn to be conducted to the
first steps of that wonderful and interesting process
the emigrant goes through in Naples.

CHAPTER XI

THROUGH THE CITY OF THIEVES

IN a half-hearted, divided-responsibility sort of
way, the Italian government, the steamship com-
panies and the United States authorities endeavor
to do at Naples, the world's greatest port of emigrant
embarkation, what should be done thoroughly a stage
sooner, viz., to sort out those who are likely to be
turned back at Ellis Island and to prevent them from
sailing. How much easier, cheaper and more effective
to have done it at home!

So far as this narrative of the experiences of my
wife and myself and our family party is concerned, I
would estimate that stage of the process which was
reached at Naples as of equal or greater importance
than the Ellis Island process proper.

Before we left our native land to begin the research
in Italy, we were under the impression that emigration
was merely a matter of so many hundreds of thou-
sands of people traveling each season from their homes
in Europe to the nearest ports, and taking third-class
passage to New York, where they were landed at
Ellis Island and examined. That is the American idea
of it, — that and no more ! That anything befell them,
other than happens to traveling families in any place,
before they reached Ellis Island, never occurred to us.
The process of birth certificates, passports, declarations,
and grouping by the numbers on the ship's manifest
was all unexpected; and here at Naples was yet more

THROUGH THE CITY OF THIEVES 139

formality, and, looking back over the whole trip, the
Naples stage seems really more interesting and surely
as important as the Ellis Island one.

The morning (3oth of September) that we arrived
on the Reina Margherita from Messina, and debarked
with our baggage at nine o'clock on the quay before
the Capitaneria del Porto, with no shelter from the sun
already beginning to send down rays of broiling heat
and blinding whiteness, we were rallied into one
crowd by agents of the North German Lloyd broker,
Vincenzo di Luca fu Giacomo, who stood at the foot
of the gangplank crying, " Germanese ! Germanese! "
and into another by agents of the La Veloce Line
broker, who stood on the other side and called,
"Veloce! Veloce!"

Across the quay, directly opposite where the Reina
Margherita had docked, lay the beautiful long gray
Citta di Napoli, ready to sail that day, and from the
other side of the Capitaneria we could see emigrants
who were going in her, pouring out of the examina-
tion-rooms in hundreds, and carrying their baggage
aboard. All the third-class passengers among us who
were going by the Veloce Line were quickly herded
together, and rushed away and put through the pro-
cess. As our steamer did not sail yet for two days,
we were left to wait while all the Veloce baggage was
passed through the custom-house, and then that of all
the first class from the Reina Margherita, as there is a
city customs duty in Naples in addition to the national
revenue, and baggage is looked at very carefully for
comestibles, or anything that can be eaten or con-
verted into food-stuffs.

We had had no breakfast; we had had exceedingly
little sleep; the air outside the bay had been chilling;

140 IMPORTED AMERICANS

and now we were left huddled in the dust under that
pouring sun till it was somebody's pleasure to remove
us. A high iron fence topped with spear pickets
prevented our getting out, and if we tried to go
through the doorway into the Capitaneria there were
policemen to push us back. Despite the strict rules
of the Capitaneria concerning any Neapolitans being
allowed in among third-class passengers not yet
admitted to the port, or among those passed for em-
barkation, peddlers, water-sellers, beggars and mendi-
cant friars began to filter through the Capitaneria and
over the fence, until, even if we were oppressed with
weariness, heat, dust and hunger, we at least had
diversion, and were able to buy warm water with a
dash of licorice in it. One buxom young woman who
came in with an ollah and served all customers out of
the same glass was of a fine cheery type, and when
some of the people about us complained and asked
whether this was what they were to expect in the way
of treatment, she would laugh and say:

"Oh, do not trouble yourself because you are weak
with weariness and have no place to sit down but the
dust in the hot sun. This is heavenly to what you
will find later on."

I heard her tell Camela and Concetta this, and the
effect was anything but cheering on them. Antonio
tried to comfort them, but he was almost at his wits'
end, answering questions from all the members of
our party as to when they were going to get some-
thing to eat, whether we were to go at once on the
steamer, whether or not they looked "sick in the
eyes," and might they open one of the trunks to get a
bottle of wine, and so on indefinitely.

The begging friars were nearly all Franciscans, and

THROUGH THE CITY OF THIEVES 141

moved about the various enclosures among the thou-
sands of emigrants, telling them that they could best
ward off the fearful dangers of the voyage and in the
new, wild land, America, by purchasing prayer-cards.
They got a great deal of money in this way.

It was with keen disappointment that I saw a party
of three persons, an old woman, her daughter and the
daughter's small boy, who were going by the Citta di
Napoli, brought off the Reina Margherita and hurried
away with the other Veloce people. I had observed
their diseased eyes the evening before, and had warned
all of our party to keep away from them; but the
young woman had made friends with one of our
neighbors, to whom she confided the fact that this
was her third trip to Naples with her mother and
her boy. She had tried twice before to go to Amer-
ica, but all had been turned down on account of
trachoma, and sent back to Messina, where they lived.
Now, by arranging to perform that indefinite process
I heard so much about, " Pay some money to some
people," she fully expected to get through at Naples and
to be landed in New York. I had planned to check up
every step of her process and see if she really did get
through with the old woman and the child; but now
she was hustled away, and we were left standing
helpless. I had the name she gave to our neighbor,
and the address in Messina, but either the neighbor
was mistaken or the name fictitious.

Soon after they had gone, an old man with a swarm
of young clerks appeared, and, calling the roll of the
party, issued tickets which were good for daily rations,
while we were held in Naples, at the North German
Lloyd's contract restaurant, the Trattoria Retifilero in
Via Lanzieri. It was a long, tedious process, involving

142 IMPORTED AMERICANS

much argument and searching for passports, tickets
and papers.

When the old man was finished, he and his hench-
men marshaled the crowd, divided it off into groups
amid a wild uproar, and each group of thirty or forty
followed one of the young clerks into the Capitaneria,
where they were led before the city customs officials,
who ransacked their baggage for comestibles. A
number of the members of our party were intensely
agitated over the performance, it being their first ex-
perience, and little Nastasia, who had wine and cheese
in his box, was wild with fright. He was afraid he
would be arrested, or something would happen that
would prevent his going.

A few times before, I had seen evidences of this fear
among others of our party, and I soon realized that
what makes the emigrant so meek in the face of out-
rageous brutalities, so open to the wiles of sharpers, so
thoroughly disconcerted and bewildered in the face of
an examination, is his terrible dread of not being al-
lowed to enter America. He would as soon think of
cutting off a hand as doing anything that " would get
him into trouble."

When the city customs officials were finished with
us, we were passed through to the front of the Capi-
taneria, and to the left, where the steamship broker's
representatives were busy checking the heavy bag-
gage. Almost the entire party was dependent on
Antonio and me to worry the score of big trunks,
boxes and bundles through, and, this spot being just
as hot and dusty as the other side of the Capitaneria,
the whole party was in a deplorable condition when
at last we were ready to be led to our abiding-place
for the two nights we would be in Naples.

THROUGH THE CITY OF THIEVES 143

Once outside the iron fence bounding the Capi-
taneria, the group largely made up of our party strag-
gled along under the weight of their baggage, follow-
ing the young clerk who piloted us along the Marina,
with its turmoil of commerce, and soon we turned
into the Vico di via Porta. Threading our way
through the narrow street, jammed with all the life of
the lower classes, we came at last to the Albergo della
Rosa, or Rose Hotel, in the Lanzieri.

It is one of the many houses whose great source of
income is the housing of emigrants at fixed rates of
from one to two lire per night. The first floor was
occupied by shops; around the entrance were gathered
carts loaded with all sorts of wares from vegetables to
trumpery combs, mirrors, soaps, baggage-straps, — in
fact, all of the things which the poor emigrant could
be led to fancy he wanted for the voyage. The house
did not look very inviting, and as we hesitated a
horde of runners from other houses pounced upon us
and almost dragged us elsewhere. Some of our peo-
ple would have gone if a respectable old gentleman
passing by and hearing the commotion had not stopped
and addressed us, saying, " Go to this hotel if the com-
pany sends you here, and do not take up with these
thieves. Some of the places they recommend are of
a most dangerous character. Emigrants are robbed
there constantly."

I had firmly decided that our party should stop at the
Albergo della Rosa, and contrived to persuade the
others in our group not to be influenced by the im-
portunate Neapolitans.

The host — a short, unshaven, bibulous-looking person
— appeared, and we were conducted to the second and
third floors, and allowed to sort ourselves out into

144 IMPORTED AMERICANS

three large rooms, filled with single beds. All of the
women and children were given a front room with
light and air, and the men took the others.

Here occurred an evidence of that class feeling
which exists from the beggar up in Italy. There is no
democracy. By a very natural process, with no words
or discussion, Nunzio Giunta, Antonio Squadrito,
Nicola Curro and one or two others, who considered
themselves members of a better class than our farmer-
boys from Socosa, for instance, took the best room,
leaving the third, which was dark and close, to the
others, who accepted it without a murmur. In this
connection I would note an amusing thing: Antonio
never carried his own baggage till he reached America,
nor did he ever fail to protest when I shouldered mine.
He was afraid we should lose caste in the eyes of the
people we met.

It was not ten minutes after we were indoors, before
every member of the party was stretched out and
sound asleep, being simply exhausted by the strain
under which we had been for two days.

It was nearly six o'clock when the host roused
everybody to tell them that if they wished to take
advantage of the one meal a day the steamship broker
was paying for, they should be going to the trattoria.

It was a subdued party that arrayed itself, filed
down the stairs, and went to its first substantial meal
since noon of the day before. There was less talking
done than there had been over anything since we
started from Gualtieri.

At the restaurant we found some hundreds of
emigrants coming and going, and others seated at the
tables. For a half hour we waited until those eating
made room enough for us, and then we gathered

THROUGH THE CITY OF THIEVES 145

around one of the large tables arranged about the long
room, and soon were served by unkempt waiters with
soup made with tomatoes and paste, a stew of meat
and vegetables, the meat being from portions of the
goat not the most savory, melons and wine. Poor
little Ina was very hungry but very brave. She con-
fessed, after we had all been cheered and stimulated
by the meal, that she had been afraid she would "faint,
and they would not let a fainty girl go to America."

Nothing was of more interest to me than the rapid
broadening of the mental scope of the children and
young folks in our party. Pretty Concetta, in all her
sixteen years, had never been away from home before.
Some of the youths had never been outside the village
community of Gualtieri. Little Ina showed how bright
she is and how well she had understood all the won-
ders that had been told her, by refusing to be appalled
by the tremendous size and unheard-of splendor
of Naples, for such the town, shabby and tumble-
down as it is in the parts they had visited, seemed to
them. She took her new experiences as a matter of
course.

We walked out into the city after supper, and Con-
cetta was as nearly like a wild, frightened animal of the
forest as anything of which I can think. As I knew
the city well, I piloted them to the portions where
there would be the most interesting sights in the sun-
set hours and the early evening. As we were crossing
the Piazza Borsa, with its busy traffic and many speed-
ing electric cars, she clung to Camela's arm, and Camela
clung to my wife. The passing horses and cars
seemed to utterly bewilder them, and when we were
little more than halfway across, Camela and Concetta
broke into a wild run, and, despite my wife's resistance,

146 IMPORTED AMERICANS

dragged her the remainder of the way to the sidewalk,
the last spurt being directly in front of a Toretta train.
When we were all safely assembled on the sidewalk,
Giovanni Pulejo, himself trembling all over, turned to
me and said :

"Oh, all this noise makes my head as big as my
body. Let us go back to the house."

In one of the little side streets Camela suddenly
stopped with an exclamation of disgust, and pointed
to some boys with a plate of macaroni. They were
shoveling it into their mouths with their fingers in the
fashion that is met with only in Naples.

After we had passed through the splendid business
arcade, the Galleria Umberto, had seen the Royal
Palace and other wonders, we came suddenly to a
little street which has a peculiar reputation in Naples.
It is the Vicolo del Pallonetto. Many years ago, when
both the Mafia and Camorra were flourishing insti-
tutions in Italy, some strange things happened in this
street.

It is so steep that it is paved with stones set like
stairs, and many are the dead who have been found
there at dawn. Now the street is inhabited for the
most part with honest people of the Neapolitan brand
of that virtue, and it has the distinction of having sent
great numbers of street-piano Italians to America.
"The dago with the monkey" was the pioneer of
Italian emigration to the United States ; then came the
lemon-seller, who took to the banana and peanut busi-
ness. Some people take it as a matter of course that
bananas and peanuts have their home in Italy. An Ital-
ian fruit-vender whom I know tells me he has people
ask him nearly every day whether he has any Italian
bananas. The truth is that both bananas and peanuts

The Storied Vicolo del Pallonetto in Naples

THROUGH THE CITY OF THIEVES 147

are as rare in Italy as alligator pears in New York.
Several house-owners in this street are retired hand-
organ players who have made substantial fortunes in
America in other years.

As we came through the street with our trailing,
staring, interested party, scores of persons with rela-
tives in America came out of the houses or called down
from the balconies, desiring that we look up their
friends in the States and take them messages. Lest
some who read these lines may find in them fresh
cause to raise the Mafia bugaboo, I will repeat an ear-
lier assertion: while it is no use denying that once the
Mafia was a large, well-organized and most murderous
society, and that for a long period it built up a record
of atrocious crimes, extortions coupled with murders,
the stringent measures adopted in Italy have sup-
pressed it so effectually that actual Mafia members are
only a few middle-aged or old men, who keep their
allegiance only for fear of their old comrades. No man
dares raise his voice to-day and call himself " Mafite"
except in America, and here the man who does it is
a common criminal, trading on the terrors of the old
bloody band.

This country was greatly roused over the operations
of a secret society in New Orleans, and much was
written and said about the Mafia at the time. It is true
some of the men were old Mafiti, but I have the word
of an Italian secret-service official of high rank that the
band was a purely independent organization. About
a year ago a terrible murder was committed by Italians
in New York, and there was not one of the great lead-
ing dailies and the reviewing periodicals but pro-
nounced it an outbreak of a Mafia band. A number
of men were arrested, with strong proof against them,

148 IMPORTED AMERICANS

and they were labeled "The Band," and connections
with other Mafia bands sought for in Buffalo, Chicago,
New Orleans, and elsewhere. Very serious editors
discussed "the growth of the Mafia in America" and
"the frightful influx of criminal Italians." The whole
had considerable influence on the Shattuc bill. The
truth of the matter is that "The Band" was merely a
small gang of counterfeiters, most of them men of
such undesirable qualities that they would never have
been able to gain admission to the Mafia; and they
were no more Mafiti, strictly speaking, than are the
members of the American Board of Foreign Missions.
I repeat, "the Mafia in America" is nothing but a
bugaboo. Men who belong to small criminal gangs
used the word as a means of extortion, and the mys-
terious murders which happen frequently — always with
Italians as the victims — are private vendettas. When
we consider that the Sicilian considers it just as much
his inherent right to stab a man who has done him a
great wrong as the American Southerner to lynch a
negro who has turned beast, and that criminal Italians
in America work astounding injustices on their gullible
countrymen, it is a wonder that there are not more
mysterious murders than there are. The deportation
from America of about six shiploads of Italian parasites
who live on the labor of their fellows would put an
end to all such things in this country. The average
Italian living in America would rather go to prison for
five or ten years than be deported. And many an
Italian gladly goes to prison to be maintained while
he learns a trade and how to read and write English.

It seemed strange indeed to be leading a company of
honest country folk along a street so noted for its dark
crimes, but in the hearty greetings and hospitality of the

THROUGH THE CITY OF THIEVES 149

people about us in the Pallonetto there was no sign of
the blackness of that other day.

It was most amusing when I piled the whole crowd
on a car bound out toward Possilipo, past the villas on
the northern rim of the wonderful bay. I had let
many cars go by till I saw one coming that was nearly
empty, and when we were all in we nearly filled it.
The boys all wanted to sit together. They were in
high glee, and crowded nine into one seat, to the dis-
may of the conductor and the entertainment of the
other passengers. The conductor stopped the car and
straightened them out, distributing them into empty
places. When the car was going at full speed I looked
back and saw that every one was holding on to the seat
for dear life, and watching Antonio and myself anx-
iously to see if we gave any sign that we were in danger.
Having occasion to change cars, Concetta and Camela
lost their heads and sprang upon the other car while it
was still in motion. Antonio and the conductor caught
them and lifted them up, or else one or the other
would certainly have been hurt. If our people were
so overwhelmed by life in Naples I wondered what
they would do in New York. However, before this
evening trip was over, and we went back to the
Albergo della Rosa, my wife and I both remarked a
change that had come over all, especially the younger
ones. It was one of the first displays of their adapt-
ability,— one of the best characteristics of the Italians
now pouring into America. In a few hours they had got
a fine grasp on city ways, and the people we brought
back to the emigrant lodging-house behaved far dif-
ferently from those we had taken away. The wild
look was gone from Concetta's eyes, and only in the
roar of Broadway did I see it again.

150 IMPORTED AMERICANS

There is no part of southern Italy where the flea is
not a bloodthirsty brigand, but in Naples he seems to
partake of the characteristics of the city and is clever,
wily, bold, and — oh! so numerous. In the Albergo
della Rosa, that night, it really seemed that the vermin of
southern Europe, brought to the lodging-house by emi-
grants from all lands, had assembled for an international
clinic, and we were the subjects. If that great man
who makes animals talk in his books had only been
there, he would have heard the Grecian bedbug telling
the Russian Jew louse that he and the Syrian sand-
gnat had just had a choice nip of raw American that
had been pointed out to him by the Calabrese fleas
who were first-cousins of their hosts the Neapolitans.

Some beast of the night had bitten little Ina on the
right eyelid, and when we arose in the morning the
eye was almost closed.

CHAPTER XII

ROGUERY AND ILLITERACY

BRIGHT and early I set about contriving some
method of getting out of Italy in the guise I
wished. I could not get an Italian passport
in Naples, for the same reason I could not get one in
Gualtieri. I could not get a birth certificate in the
municipality, for the very good reason that I had not
been born there. Yet I must have a passport, either
Italian or American, if I wished to be allowed to go
aboard the Prin^essin Irene as a third-class passenger.
If I desired that my wife and I should travel first-class
no questions would be asked us by anybody, either in
Naples or New York. That would ruin my chain of
investigation. I must go in the steerage, and I must
go through Ellis Island. With American credentials I
would leave the Prin^essin Irene at the docks in New
York, which I did not desire to do, and without the
credentials I could not get on board the ship. It was
truly a puzzling situation. I sounded first the under-
ground methods, of which I will have more to say
later, and found that they were too dangerous to my
work. Then I decided to go aboard as an American
and get off as an Italian, and to go aboard as an
American I must go to the consulate, make application
for a passport, and then, having been properly identi-
fied, hurry to the American embassy in Rome and get
the passport, a paper which only the ambassador can
issue.

152 IMPORTED AMERICANS

The American consul in Naples is A. Homer Bying-
ton, a name famous among journalists from Maine to
California; and, going to the consulate, I made a clean
breast of the whole affair to Mr. Homer M. Byington,
his vice-consul.

" It is a shame to let a good story fall down," said
he. "Wait till I can get Mr. St. Ledger, our vice-
consul, on the docks, and we will see what can be
done."

In half an hour I had the assurance that Com. Aillo,
chief officer at the Capitaneria, would allow me to
pass without a passport, Mr. St. Ledger being my
sponsor.

I had yet to buy our tickets, and, going to the offices
of Vincenzo di Luca fu Giacomo, the North German
Lloyd broker, the man who handles all the third-class
passengers, I applied for a ticket, and was refused be-
cause I had no passport, as the law under which the
government selects the brokers of emigrants' tickets
strictly forbids a ticket being sold to an emigrant
unless he has a passport.

The Barcelona sub-agent of the La Veloce broker at
Messina was caught sending over-aged emigrants over-
land from Italy to Bremen and Hamburg, whence
they embarked for the United States, and was arrested
and given a term of imprisonment. He had been
smuggling across the northern border persons refused
passports because of age and the likelihood of their
being returned to Italy from Ellis Island. One party
lost a trunk and wrote back from Hamburg about it,
and, the whole plot thus revealed, the arrests followed.

The court of last resort was Mr. Nicolo Padolfino, in
charge of the Neapolitan broker's department of dec-
larations, and by assiduous efforts I got his ear and

ROGUERY AND ILLITERACY 153

took him into my confidence. I began to feel that if I
kept on at this rate there would be few officials in the
region but would know all about my doings, and my
opportunities would be correspondingly limited. Many

things transpired but I emerged from the fray with

the third-class tickets that would land my wife and
myself in Ellis Island — all of which goes to show how
difficult it is for an emigrant to leave Italy without all
of his papers being straight from his native village or
town, on up to the last gate at Naples. During a
previous stay in Naples I had heard of a school in the
Via St. Sebastian which coached illiterate and ig-
norant emigrants sufficiently to ensure their being
passed at Ellis Island. Now I heard of yet another,
and, looking them up, found that they had the moral
support if not the financial assistance of the Italian
Bureau of Emigration and the Emigrant Congress,
which had just finished meeting at Udine. All this
sounded very interesting and seemed to have its start-
ling features, but a little further investigation showed
me that while their intents are bad enough for the in-
terests of the United States, their achievements are not
at all dangerous. While these places are anxious to
coach up undesirable emigrants and get them out of
the country, the foolish, unappreciative emigrant re-
fuses to come to the schools to be coached. If ever
these schools should be again "discovered," I hope
that the seeker for truth will learn the whole truth and
have a good laugh over it.

At this point a word should be said about the Emi-
grant Congress. It is one of those highly public-spir-
ited societies, that delights in its annual session and the
attendant junketing, the speeches that " view with
alarm " conditions which statistics show to exist, and,

154 IMPORTED AMERICANS

having appointed a committee to attend to the read-
justment of this and that particular phase of national
life, passes resolutions, adjourns only to meet again
another year, and hear to what extent the committee
has annoyed truly businesslike statesmen. The Udine
session was just such a one. Some of the speeches
made showed a ridiculous lack of knowledge of
American conditions. The proceedings lie before me
as I write, and they certainly are most futile. 1 am
glad they are. Here, with occasional bracketed inser-
tions to lighten passages which are obscure even in a
very liberal translation, are the resolutions adopted:

On the topic of organization of the emigrants the
insertion in "the order of the day," moved by "Con-
gressman" Cabrini and carried, was:

" This assembly considers that a professional
[formed by salaried organizers] organization open to
all laboring men, without political or religious pre-
judice, is one of the very soundest methods of
ameliorating the economic conditions, both moral and
intellectual, of the laboring classes: holding that it is
indispensable to the formation of a feeling of fraternal
cordiality in the country, the control of the temporary
emigration, the organization of the poor artisans ;
furthermore contending that for the assistance of the
emigrants it is necessary that an organization of all
Italian operatives consider the importance of all this
and pray the Honorable Secretary of Emigration to
instruct at all times, more than in the past, their
leader's actions."

On the topic of educating the emigrant so that he
may avoid being barred because of illiteracy, and may
not be victimized by the patrone system, Professor
Frescura introduced the following:

ROGUERY AND ILLITERACY 155

"All are in accord as to the necessity for instructing
the emigrant. But be it held that the programme pre-
sented by Professor Galeno [ a noted philanthropist
who recommended that special schools with govern-
ment-paid teachers be established], though splendid,
is too vast. It is far better that there should come
about a modification of those schools which we al-
ready have."

When a lawyer named Cossattini had amended to
increase the pay of the teachers in the districts where
help was most needed, and " Congressman " Giradini
had amended that instruction vary according to the
exigencies of emigration, the Frescura resolution was
passed.

In the matter of temporary emigration the Congress
merely followed the lead of Professor Levi-Morenos,
who was a member also of the International Agricul-
tural Congress at Rome in May, 1903, in which it was
bewailed that German and other ships were sharing so
much Italian traffic back and forth between Italy and
North and South America, and that so many emigrants
were returning broken in health and injured. There
was a lively row over contract labor of temporary
emigrants. We are accustomed to think that our very
stringent contract-labor laws are successfully exclud-
ing aliens under contract, but debate in the Congress
would lead one to think the laws had merely made the
patrones more powerful by making "smuggled " alien
labor more valuable to American corporations.

In the matter of the " mediazione " of labor, or
" bureauizing " it, as it were, to avoid the necessity or
opportunity for patrones, or, as they are referred to by
real sociologists of the first water on the other side,
sfruttratori, a lively debate brought out some sharp

156 IMPORTED AMERICANS

attacks on government methods, Senator Bodio mak-
ing a great speech and pushing to acceptance the fol-
lowing:

"This Congress considers it is necessary to exercise
in behalf of pur emigrant labor a convenient media-
%ione for avoiding that going forth blindly and that ex-
posure to perfidious ' grafters ' and innumerable
perils, so coming to a condition of things that pro-
duces an obnoxious and foolish reduction of their pay,
raises the animosity of their fellow-craftsmen [ of
America], causes prohibitive laws by the governments
[American, etc.], acknowledging the purely negative
character of our insufficient information and the hurt-
ful and too widely public quality of the positive sort.

"It is our wish that a more useful and rational
method of private media^ione of our labor, as already
presaged in the acts of the Secretary of Emigration of
Udine, come to be followed by the secretaries in sim-
ilar offices in the chief places in the provinces, which
action should be co-ordinated by means of a National
Federation centralized, with branch sessions in each
important centre of emigration in each particular
province."

It was decided to hold another Congress in Rome in
two years.

Barring Italian emigrants because they are illiterate
will result merely in their being given a superficial
education in reading and writing to enable them to
pass our port examinations, and will not raise the
standard of their intelligence in the least; furthermore,
what advantage will the United States derive from
their being taught to read and write in Italian when
the ability to read Italian newspapers in this country
will but serve to delay their thorough Americanization.
It must not be forgotten that the many Italian news-
papers in this country are not American any more in

ROGUERY AND ILLITERACY 157

sympathy than in print. A thoroughly American
newspaper printed in Italian would be a blessing in
both New York and Boston.

The evening before the day we were to go aboard,
we went for a trip outside the city to get a little rest
and recreation before encountering the ordeal of going
through the Capitaneria and embarking. I saw by the
roadside a party of emigrants from one of the villages
back of Naples, who were driving in with huge carts,
and had stopped, possibly for the night. They were
the poorest that I had yet seen, and two old women,
whom I observed, I felt sure would be refused by the
doctors on their general physical condition.

On our way home we changed cars in the San Fer-
nandino, and as we stood waiting 1 noticed an evil-
looking "bravo-like " sort of a chap eyeing me closely,
and I moved away from the remainder of the party in
order to see if he would approach me. I found I was
right in my estimate of him. He evidently took me
for a returned emigrant with good American dollars in
my pocket, for he came over, walked along slowly be-
hind me, slapped me on the shoulder, and said in
English, —

"Hello, John!"

"Che?" I answered, feigning stupidity and half-
recognition as I turned toward him.

Then he came out with the old, old, very old con-
fidence game. He asked me where he had seen me
last. I surmised it was in Pittsburg; and he was at
once sure it was, and we chatted on in Italian, or rather
I answered merely enough to keep my lingual dis-
crepancies from being observed. Just then another of
his sort came along and inquired the way to a near-by
street, showing a fifty-lire note, and saying he had

158 IMPORTED AMERICANS

been sent by a man to deliver it, and was so unfamiliar
with Naples he had lost his way. Thief Number One
winked at me and said in English:

" Come on, John, we get dat moneys."

"How? "said I.

Thief Number Two was staring around at the build-
ings to give Thief Number One full chance with me.
This worthy made a quick sign of playing cards. I
saw the car approaching which I wanted our people to
take, and so, to end matters, I turned him " the sign of
the thumb,"1 a signal of the freemasonry of thieves
which I had picked up long before in the Italian quarter
in New York, and at it the words died on his lips. The
other man caught it too, and his eyes got very wide with
surprise, then suddenly narrowed and darkened. Both
responded with lightning-like signals that were so
near to natural movements of the right hand that if
both had not done it I would not have known it was a
signal, and when I could not respond in kind they
darted away as if from sudden death.

If I had gone with Number One in the first place to
try to fleece Number Two, there would have been an-
other case for the Naples police of the " mysterious dis-
appearance" of a returned emigrant. I could not long
have concealed my nationality, and that might perhaps
have saved me.

1 The sign of the thumb is a quick motion of the hand by turning
the whole hand palm up, fingers half closed and thumb out. It is a
very general sign of suspicion of a third party or of confidence between
two.

CHAPTER XIII

THE EMBARKATION PROCESS

IN the morning we were up early, and after a very
indifferent breakfast got our hand luggage to-
gether and departed from the Albergo della Rosa.
At the door we were beset by fruit-venders with their
long barrows, and small tradesmen with all sorts of
trifles that they convinced our people were indis-
pensable on the voyage; and I really believe that be-
tween the lodging-house and the steamship-broker's
offices that portion of the party which lagged behind
where I could not control them bought forty or fifty
lire worth of stuff that was worse than useless, being
merely a burden and a care.

At the steamship-broker's offices an enormous crowd
was gathered. Two thirds of them had no real oc-
casion to go there, but if one member of a party was
not right in his papers, or imagined he was not, all the
party went with him to avoid being separated. We
had some baggage checks to see about. It seemed
that there was not one hour of our journey from
Gualtieri to our American destination which was not
embittered by the mishaps of that baggage, and as I
write, months after, some of it is still missing. I have
had thoughts about it that were deeper than the greatest
depths of profanity, and more far-reaching than the
extent of the combined English and Italian languages
in blasphemous reference.

160 IMPORTED AMERICANS

We passed down the Vico di Via Porta and along
the Marina, a veritable tumult of sailing-day traffic.

A highly picturesque carreta loaded with emigrants
and their friends on their way to the Capitaneria from
their country home came jogging by and paused long
enough to be kodaked.

Near the railroad tracks we came upon a group that
was both laughable and pathetic. It was one of the
places of sudden and forced sale of household effects
of emigrants. Some of the foolish people will bring,
even from provinces more distant than the Campania,
quantities of household goods, furniture, etc., and their
hearts are almost broken when they find they cannot
take it aboard. They have felt sure that there must be
some little corner on such a big ship in which they can
place a half-dozen two-hundred-years-old hand-made
chairs, or a five-foot bureau, or so small a matter as a
table large enough to accommodate a family of the
usual Italian size. However, here was a pile of it,
heaped up indiscriminately, and about and on it were
beggars who had bargained to look after it, or owners
who had decided to remain and guard their own.

When we arrived within the iron enclosure of the
Capitaneria we found that the first thing to demand
attention was of course the baggage. It was already
getting hot, and the large space of open, unsheltered
dust in front of the Capitaneria was strewn with
luggage of all shapes and sizes. There were huge
wooden chests, bundles of bedclothes and blankets,
casks of wine, kegs of olives, and cheese and butter,
and quantities of small bags like my own. All such
were already tumbling to pieces, being but cloth and
paper pasted over frail wooden frames, and made on
purpose to be sold to emigrants at ten times their value.

THE EMBARKATION PROCESS 161

Men went about selling grass ropes with which to tie
them up.

First of all we had to get the baggage together and
separate the hand baggage from the hold baggage;
then the latter must all be opened up before the Ameri-
can consular agent and inspected, numbered, and
listed; next inspected by the port health authorities ;
then received and receipted for by the company's
agents; and what with wild efforts of the emigrants to
go backward through the process, to get shut trunks
that had been opened and shaken up in inspection, and
to get through before the steamer should leave, it was
a scene to wring a man's soul. If any of our party
had any trouble, they came to Antonio or to me with
it. Antonio went about holding his head as if he was
afraid it would burst, and all the emigrants about us
kept an eye on the big ship; not due to sail for hours
yet, as if they were afraid to see it start off, like a
train, at any moment.

This section of the toil and turmoil being over at
last, we found that we had to carry our encumbrances
to the south side of the Capitaneria and embark on a
small steamer which would take us over to thefumi-
gating-station, half a mile across the harbor, on the
breakwater. It was an hour before we were properly
assembled at this embarkation point, and the women
were already almost succumbing to the dust and
heat.

The little steamers were not much more than barges
with donkey-engine power in them, and emigrants and
baggage were piled in till it seemed they would swamp
the craft. The men in charge of the boats knocked
the emigrants about in a shameful fashion, without
regard to their being men, women, or children, and

162 IMPORTED AMERICANS

the fear of " getting into trouble " caused the emigrants
to take it all without resentment.

I observed many emigrants who had come to the
point for embarkation on these little steamers, taking
their baggage back without going to the fumigating-
station, and a little careful watching showed me that
certain furtive Neapolitans were directing them. The
little groups paused a moment just outside the door
of the police station in the south side of the Capitan-
eria and then hurried on around to the north side
with the baggage.

I purposely put myself in the way of one of the
sneaking Neapolitans and asked some question con-
cerning the baggage.

"You do not need to go over there for fumigation
and inspection if you do not want to," he said.

"Is that so? How can we avoid it?"

"I know some men who will put on the labels that
they put on over there, and no one will know you
have not been there."

I thought best to call Antonio to engineer the deal by
which I hoped to trap this gang, which I could see
must be counterfeiting official seals. He went aside
with the Neapolitan, and soon turned away shaking
his head. I called to him and asked what was the
trouble. He said the Neapolitan wanted fifty lire for
our eleven pieces of hand baggage. The other had
already gone. I told Antonio to offer him twenty and
I would pay it. Antonio offered fifteen and the Nea-
politan accepted.

Soon a man I had not seen before appeared and beck-
oned to us, and we toiled with our loads over to the
south side of the Capitaneria, set our baggage down
in a row against the building, and in an instant a cor-

At the Doorway of the Capitaneria — Author's Party on
the Quay

THE EMBARKATION PROCESS 163

don of guards, four in number, was stationed about us.
They came out of the crowd like summoned spirits.
No words passed. A fifth man appeared, and with
lightning-like rapidity affixed to the baggage, by lift-
ing up the tacked ends of straps, or prying open the
tiny lead billets themselves, little metal seals impressed
with the seal of the Italian government. It was the
work of but a few seconds, interrupted once by the
appearance of a pompous uniformed police officer who
walked right by the baggage without noticing any-
thing unusual in progress. The guards had given a
quick signal as he appeared, and the groups seemed
most ordinary. A sixth man appeared with a paste-
brush and some little red labels. With one movement
only he pasted- each piece of baggage, and a seventh
man, following him, affixed some large yellow labels
bearing the United States consular seal. The eighth
man was the one I had first seen; he appeared to be
the capo or chief of the gang.

Meanwhile I had made careful mental notes of the
eight men. I was determined to get some or all of
them into the proper hands. As soon as they were
through they all hurried away, mingling with the
crowd without waiting for their pay. That seemed
odd.

We carried our baggage around to the other side of
the Capitaneria, and there stood the eighth man, really
the best dressed of the lot, and signed to us to put our
baggage inside a gate where two policemen were on
guard, without going to a stand where men in the
service of the United States consular service were past-
ing on genuine yellow labels on such baggage as had
been over to the fumigating-station.

As we passed our baggage through the gate a boy

164 IMPORTED AMERICANS

marked each piece with a number, gave us a check,
and it was all piled in rows on the ground, inside the
fence, under police guard.

Straightening up with a sigh of relief at having
passed the danger line so far as the fraudulent baggage
was concerned, and free from our encumbrances for
a while at least, I found the eighth man at my elbow.
He said we must now go and be vaccinated. This
was something I did not care about, nor did my wife.
We each needed both arms in good condition for some
time to come, but as I looked at my health ticket I saw
there was a space on the back where there must be the
vaccination stamp.

" For a lire I will tell you how to keep from getting
a sore arm," said the thief beside me. I gave him the
lire.

"When the doctor vaccinates you, rub your shirt
sleeve down over the two scratched places quickly;
then suck them. He will not stop you."

In the middle of the open rough lot, very similar to
half-ploughed ground, which lay out beyond the Capi-
taneria fence, stood a small building with a big door.
Crowds of emigrants were struggling around it.
Venders of water-ice, lemons, fruit, etc., were in the
midst of the crowd, holding their stands with one
hand to keep them from being knocked over while
they dealt out wares, made change, and talked with
the other.

When we had fought our way inside at last, the
crowd that was let in with us took seats all around the
room in a row. Three doctors sat on a raised dais
at one side. One did the vaccinating, the others the
clerical end of the work. I believe they took turns.
The moment we entered, the vaccinating doctor

THE EMBARKATION PROCESS 165

caught sight of my wife, and, advancing politely, ad-
dressed her in German. He thought her an Austrian,
and afterward confessed that he believed her to be a
Moravian missionary. He was a very amiable sort of
fellow, with a fine education, both general and pro-
fessional, I should judge.

With a gallantry which might not have been so ef-
fusive if he had suspected that she had a husband pres-
ent, he vaccinated my wife first, and she removed the
virus with haste.

At the sight of the fierce-looking old man putting
down the bared point of steel on my wife's bare arm the
women shrieked and the children began to cry. Little
Anastasia made a break for the door, but a guard
blocked his exit. Others fought to get out. The
other doctors reassured them ; and after much difficulty
all in the room were vaccinated, every member of our
party following the advice of the thief. Concetta was
as white as milk from fright and horror.

Outside, the thief informed us that we would not be
required to go back to the Capitaneria just yet, but I
did not believe him until I had asked one of the guards,
for I mistrusted the thief because he had not asked for
the pay for the job done by the gang. Now he asked
us to leave the vicinity of the Capitaneria and go to a
nice place with him to get something to eat. I re-
fused, and then he demanded his money. If we had
gone with him he would have put up some game that
would have wrung a few lire from us at least, and, if
we had been as stupid as his usual victims, perhaps all
that we had. He not only demanded the amount
agreed upon, but three times as much. He threatened
to get us arrested for having fraudulent labels on our
baggage. Antonio was scared to the rigidity of a

166 IMPORTED AMERICANS

poker, and all the others were trembling like leaves.
But his bluff was not equal to American aplomb, and
in a few minutes he went off with ten lire and no
more. I knew we would have no trouble from him,
and was anxious to get rid of him so as to be able to
communicate with the American consul and secure the
arrests I had in mind.

Even though the capo had left us, I observed that we
were duly watched, and, try as I would, I could not get
a message away unobserved. I could not leave the
party myself, nor could I send any of them, they being
strange to the city. I began to despair.

It was now time to return to the Capitaneria for the
final examination, and to go aboard if we passed. I
knew I should see St. Ledger there, but it might be
too late.

We made our way in at the front entrance, and were
compelled to stand for a long time in the crowd. There
the capo joined us once more. He had shed his ill
humor as a snake sheds its skin. One of the boys
brought to me the report of a case in which I was in-
terested. It was that of Mrs. Vincenzo Tortora, a
woman who had been in New York and lived with her
husband at No. 3 Elizabeth Street, and had returned to
visit her home in a village back of Naples. She had
with her a two-and-a-half-year old boy born in the
United States. Some time before, she had endeavored
to return to the States, but the doctors had refused to
allow her to do so because the child had contracted
trachoma. I saw the woman and talked with her, and
found that she had come down to Naples to see the
" underground men," who had agreed to put her
through for 300 lire. They had told her to go back, that
she could not go on a North German Lloyd steamer,

THE EMBARKATION PROCESS 167

but must go by a certain line when they sent for her.
While I was talking to her the capo came over, having
heard the boy who had reported the case to me telling
Antonio about it, and he assured the woman that if
she had come twenty-four hours sooner he would have
sent her over on the Prin^essin Irene for 100 lire.

I drew him into talk about the underground system
for diseased emigrants, and he said that there were
doctors in Naples who could so relieve trachoma in
forty-eight hours that if the emigrant kept up the treat-
ment he or she could get by the doctors at New York
or Boston. The eyes would be worse than before
after the treatment was stopped, and, if continued too
long, would cause blindness. Those emigrants who
could not be doctored up temporarily were sent through,
however.

" How sent through?"

For answer a shrug of the shoulders and— "Oh, pay
some money to some people ! " Always that evasive,
baffling answer.

However, having heard of the system in Messina, on
the steamer, and in the city of Naples, and now seeing
such palpable signs of it right in the shelter of the
Capitaneria, I began for the first time to believe what
I could scarcely credit before, — that the "gold-paved
avenue " leading into my beautiful, healthy home coun-
try, for the loathsomely and contagiously diseased,
did exist. I set on foot at that point some investi-
gations not yet ripe, and I may never harvest them;
but if I do not some one else will sooner or later "get
on the inside." I shall later prove beyond a doubt that
there is a door for diseased aliens.

Another flagrant abuse which I should mention here
was that of supposed bankers' agents inducing emi-

168 IMPORTED AMERICANS

grants to buy New York drafts for the safety of their
money. One man was going about cautioning the
emigrants to invest in drafts, and another followed him
offering drafts. The first man came up to me, after
some of our boys had been approached by him and
had referred him to me.

"Who are you?" I asked, feigning stupidity.

"The chief of police," he said, — and I laughed in his
face.

However, many were caught in the scheme, among
them a boy I had taken an interest in, a lad named
Salvatore Biajo, bound for St. Louis. He had loolire in
gold and eight in silver, and bought a draft. The draft
was all right, being on the Bank of Naples, but the
man who sold it to him, instead of making it for 108
lire minus a few centesimi for discount, put it in dol-
lars, writing in only $19 when it should have been
about $21.35 according to Post & Flagg's Ellis Island
rate. The gang of draft-sellers made two dollars off
young Biajo, and if they made as much off the hundreds
of others who bought, they did a fine day's business.

At last we were ready to move on, and, still accom-
panied by our thieving friend, who evidently wanted to
see me safe where he thought I could do him no harm,
and where I might pay him a little more for valuable
information, we entered the great north pen in the
Capitaneria, where emigrants in hundreds were stand-
ing, with their passports out, in a solid mass held back
by police, who peeled off the front row from right to
left, then back again; and we filed across the room to
a door in the corner where was the American staff, the
port doctor, the surgeons on duty for the United States
Marine Hospital Corps, the ship's surgeon, and some
others.

THE EMBARKATION PROCESS 169

We were examined; our eyelids were turned up for
trachoma; our heads rubbed over for favus; any defect-
ive-looking parts of the body touched for hidden
disease; and every now and then a man, woman, or
child would be told to stand aside for further examina-
tion, and a wail would go up from the group to which
that one belonged. It was as if a touch of death had
come among them.

I saw one old man who had taken his wife and wid-
owed daughter with her two children, sold all his little
property, and was starting for America to open up a
little business of some sort, pulled out of the line, ex-
amined for some spinal trouble, and turned down. The
family could not go without him, so they were all turned
back. There were two or three other cases like that,
which happened there before my eyes. Last year we
turned back over 20,000, including dependent relatives,
at our ports and borders. They should never have
been allowed to leave home. That is where our system
is wrong. The emigrant should not be selected at the
port of arrival, nor at the port of embarkation, but by
a small visiting itinerant board that should come to him
in his home community. We would thus get none of
the bad and lose none of the good, and a hundred out-
rages would be avoided. The fuller argument I hope
to give with the light of facts yet to be told.

When we appeared at the bar of the police official
who inspects all passports, I made our presence known
to Mr. St. Ledger, and after a word from him to the
official we were passed, went by the place where the
police were taking weapons from suspected bad men,
and out into the enclosure where our baggage was.
Against the fence I saw the face of the capo of the
gang of thieves and counterfeiters.

170 IMPORTED AMERICANS

Under a pretext I got the party halted, re-entered the
building, followed by the perplexed St. Ledger, and,
when inside, where the thieves' sentinels could not see,
I unfolded the plot I had discovered.

In a word, before the ship sailed I had the pleasure
of seeing the capo and two others in the hands of de-
tectives, and the others would have been captured had
not the port doctor, the instant he was informed of it,
rushed up to me in full view outside in the baggage en-
closure, followed by half a dozen officers, and at the
sight the thieves flew like birds.

The port doctor refused to allow our baggage to go
aboard, as it was fraudulently passed; but in the end I
got it into his dull head that if he did as he threatened,
kept us there to testify, and held our baggage for evi-
dence, he would not get any testimony from us; and
when sufficient consular pressure had been brought to
bear to show him that we had been parties to the fraud
in order to catch the counterfeiters and make the case,
he relinquished his hold on us and our belongings.
We found sixty-eight other pieces of baggage, with the
fraudulent labels on, in the enclosure. They could be
told by a slight imperfection in the red labels. The
yellow counterfeits of the United States seals were
perfect.

At last we were free to go aboard.

CHAPTER XIV

THE VOYAGE

STRUGGLING up the steep incline of the gang-
plank, set from the masonry of the quay of
the Capitaneria of the port of Naples to
the gap in the railing of the after deck of the
Prin^essin Irene, came hundreds of men, women,
and children, one and all weighted with lug-
gage. Some staggered under the weight of great
cloth-wrapped bundles; others lugged huge valises by
the grass ropes which kept them from bursting open
because of their flimsy construction; and even the tots
carried fibre-baskets of fruit, straw-cased flasks of
wine, cheese forms looped with string, and small rush-
bottomed chairs for deck sitting, bought on the quay
for twenty cents each, or home-made ones from the
villages.

There were people of all the bloods of southern
Europe, though the southern Italian predominated in
the shipload, just as they predominate in every ship-
load from Mediterranean and even from French ports
at times. His nose a.nd upper lip wrinkled up with
too much sunlight, there came an Oriental youth,
nominally a Turk, probably a hybrid, and in addition
to a fez and a pair of yellow slippers his array was
naught but an embroidered jacket and a pair of volumi-
nous silk trousers. I found myself wondering what
the temperature in New York would be on the I4th of
October, the day we were due.

172 IMPORTED AMERICANS

If one looked carefully there were to be seen twenty
different sorts of costumes of the contadini. The Tus-
can, the Trans-teveran, the Calabrese, the Sicilian, in-
denominate Swiss, Genovese, and so on; and sprinkled
thickly through the lot was a cheap attempt at the
European mode. The women were to be found wear-
ing their head-dresses much more frequently than the
men. The male contingent seemed to have had enough
money to buy for each a new cap or hat. Here and
there was to be seen an emigrant attired in the best
style of Rome, and, despite the heat of the late after-
noon, wearing a heavy cape overcoat. Some few
were barefooted, and others showed that they had
come down to Naples dressed just as they did at their
every-day labor. Altogether it was a motley assem-
blage, and nine babies out of every ten came aboard
crying. I feel convinced that a portion of these never
ceased until the voyage was over.

The most notable feature was the ease with which
one could detect that every seventh or eighth person
had been to America before, and now had gathered
around him a group of from two to thirty friends, rela-
tives, and neighbors, going over in his care, just as our
party was going in the care of Antonio Squadrito and
myself. When the steerage passengers had all been
herded on, the late-coming first-cabin voyagers arrived,
and the crowd of friends outside the iron fence was ad-
mitted to the quay.

It chanced that a piece of baggage belonging to
Genino was missing, and I was by the gangway aft,
keeping an eye out for it, and ready to tip a porter to
bring it on. It was one of those which had been fraud-
ulently passed, and the doctor of the port was minded
to hold it for evidence. Just before I spied it, a woman

THE VOYAGE 173

standing just behind me said in English so plainly that
she knew I could hear, but never dreamed that I un-
derstood:

"These dirty, repulsive creatures really seem to show
traces of the finer feelings ; do you not think so, Agnes ?
See that old man, — yes, the two other old men with
him, down there on the dock, looking up at those peo-
ple over there. I should think it was a family going
over. See them wave their hands and throw kisses,
and see the tears running down their faces. As I told
my husband when we came over, some of them are far
less heavy and embruted than one would think to look
at them."

I regret to say that woman is the daughter of a noted
Philadelphia clergyman, and her husband is an em-
ployer of many hundreds of these seemingly "em-
bruted" creatures.

As soon as ever I could be perfectly sure that all of
our party from Gualtieri-Sicamino and the newest ad-
ditions to our group from Potenza, Avellino, Scilla,
etc., were all aboard, and that none of the baggage had
been left behind, I went forward through the alley-way
that led between the galley, bakery, blacksmith shop,
and the cooks' and petty officers' quarters, to the for-
ward deck, where a terrific hubbub was in progress.
The thousand and more persons there, with their bag-
gage heaped about the deck, were all talking and all en-
deavoring to do something which mad, wild impulse
bade them attempt. It was turmoil and tumult, and
what made matters worse was that two of the for-
ward hatches were open, and late cargo was being
heaved in as fast as six derricks could do it. The slings
with a ton or two in each would come swinging and
crashing over the side, and a half-dozen men by shouts,

174 IMPORTED AMERICANS

oaths, and blows kept the bewildered emigrants from
crossing the danger-spaces between the ports in the
railings and the hatches.

Our party was scattered all about. Little Nastasia I
found perched in a perilous nook in the shrouds, eating
a musk-melon down to the hard skin, as happy as he
could be. My wife, knowing that the first thing to
look out for was the best sleeping location, had taken
Camela Squadrito and her little daughter Ina, and Con-
cetta Fomica, below into the women's compartment,
so Giovanni Pulejo informed me; and, leaving Antonio
Squadrito to round up the men and get them and their
baggage below into the second men's compartment-
it being the best ventilated, I knew,— I plunged below
to take advantage of the confusion and secure a section
of beds for the women and children nearest amidships,
on account of it being steadier there in rough weather,
and near the port-holes for air and light.

I could barely get down the big double companion-
way, so choked was it with women, children, and bag-
gage, and when I did succeed I found my wife and her
charges huddled on top of Camela's bundles, waiting
in despair for order to come out of chaos. On every
hand were screaming babies and shouting women, with
a few men going about as if mad; and at the ap-
proaches to the beds were dirty, heavy-handed steer-
age stewards, who refused to allow the women to
take beds until they were sorted out according to their
numbers on the ship's manifest and the numbers on
each bed. I saw at a glance that that would be a work
of half the night, and I asked him why they were so
particular. He answered that "a company inspector
was aboard this trip."

However, in a few minutes I observed that a Gen-

THE VOYAGE 175

ovese approached him, and, after a moment's parley,
gave him a five-lire note, and was allowed with all his
people to take the choice of the locations. Despite his
dread of the inspector, he could not resist my money
also, and in five minutes I had the women of our
party in the most secluded corner, where they could
get both light and air, that was to be found in the
place.

In a compartment from nine to ten feet high and
having a space no larger than six ordinary-sized rooms,
were beds for 195 persons, and 214 women and chil-
dren occupied them. The ventilation was merely
what was to be had from the companion-way that
opened into the alley-way, and not on the deck, the
few ports in the ship's sides, and the scanty ventilating
shafts.

The beds were double-tiered affairs in blocks of from
ten to twenty, constructed of iron framework, with iron
slats set in checker fashion to support the burlap-cov-
ered bag of straw, grass, or waste which served as a
mattress. Pillows there were none, only cork-jacket
life-preservers stuck under one end of the pseudo-mat-
tress to give the elevation of a pillow. As each emi-
grant had passed through the alley-way to come for-
ward when boarding the ship, he or she had been
given a blanket as the storeroom door was passed.
This blanket served the purpose of all bedclothing,
and any other use to which the emigrant might be
forced to put it. In material it was a mixture of wool,
cotton, and jute, with the latter predominant. In ex-
tent it was the length of a man's body and a little over
a yard and a half wide. For such quarters and accom-
modations as I have described the emigrant pays half
the sum that would buy a first-class passage. A com-

176 IMPORTED AMERICANS

parison of the two classes shows where the steamship
company makes the most money.

As soon as ever the women were settled I made my
way up and forward through the mob to the men's
compartment, where I found my 183 sleeping-compan-
ions already busily engaged in stowing their hand bag-
gage, getting their new shoes off their blistered feet,
changing their fine raiment for old clothes for ship
wear, on the advice of those who had crossed the ocean
before, or twanging away on guitar or mandolin and
thumping the tambourine.

The great ship was to have left her dock at five
o'clock; but it was after six, and cargo was still com-
ing aboard. The sun filtering through the red haze of
the west turned the dull blue of Vesuvius to purple,
and the cream of the line of the city's expanse was
touched with pink. As I came on deck into the babel
after seeing all the men allotted into beds, the scene
about was one of extreme beauty. With the wonder-
fully colored background I have mentioned, put hurry-
ing small steamers and harbor boats in the middle
distance, and for the centre of the composition of your
picture behold the enormous bulk of the steamer, her
decks black with humanity, and clustered about the
sides scores of bumboats selling melons, fico-indias,
ship-slippers, caps, mirrors, razors, brushes, candy,
wine, shawls, seasickness charms, toothache and
stomach-ache medicine, knives, pipes, and numberless
other things which the childish-minded emigrant im-
agines are necessary to life aboard ship.

At last the whistle blew, the American vice-consul
went ashore with his official papers, the lighters cast
off, the ports in the railing were closed, and the after
gangplank withdrawn. Then the screw began its

THE VOYAGE 177

slow thrashing, and soon we slid out by the light on
the end of the breakwater, leaving behind a dim vision
of a city of rose and white towers clasped in bold hills
with artificed faces that heaved up and rolled back-
ward until lost in the bosom of the night rushing on
from the east.

The great ship attained its full speed, and we glided
by Ischia, Capri, the fortresses, the prisons, and the
vineyards, till only a twinkling light high up on a
point told where the last land lay.

Never had the tumult on deck ceased. Singing, cry-
ing, laughing, quarrelling, complaining of hunger, the
fact that they were at last off for America seemed to
rouse in all a desire to say something or make a noise.
Some few women who fancied that already they were
seasick, though the ship merely quivered now and then
from the motion of the screw, sat about with their
heads on their husbands' shoulders.

Now a greater stir was brought about by the ringing
of the bell that announced supper for the steerage.
The majority of the emigrants had had but a hasty bite
at breakfast-time twelve hours before, and, being
healthy and hearty, were ravenously hungry.

From the steerage galley, which was on the level of
the main deck forward under the fo'c's'le head, the
cooks and stewards began to lug great tanks of food
and baskets of bread. These they lined up in a nar-
row passage-way between the hatch and the bulkhead
of the galley. The tanks were huge tinned things
holding about twenty-five gallons each, and from the
first there was ladled out macaroni Neapolitan, from the
next chunks of beef the size of one's fist, from the
next red wine, and then came the bread-baskets and
the boiled-potato tank.

178 IMPORTED AMERICANS

As we had come aboard and got the blankets, as I
have told, we were each handed a red card bearing an
inscription that it was "Good for One Ration," just as
on the Lahn, and advised that the passengers form
themselves into groups of six and elect a capo di ran-
do, who should manage the mess, and would, when
elected and given the six ration cards of his group, be
issued a two-gallon pan and a gallon flask-bucket for
coffee or wine. When the blanket was enrolled, each
person found inside a fork, spoon, pint tin cup, and a
flaring six-inch-wide, two-inch-deep pan out of which
to eat, identical with those on the Lahn.

The plan, or rather the ship's company's ideal of it,
is that the capo di rancio shall take the big pan and
the bucket, get the dinner and the drinkables, and dis-
tribute the portions to his group. But it works out
that one or two assistants are needed to carry the
bread if it is not desired to soak it by dropping it into
the mess in the pan, and a woman with a baby in her
arms cannot very well carry a full pan and a full
bucket. When the meal is over, some one of the
group is supposed to collect the tin utensils from
whatever part of the steerage quarters the group has
chosen to eat its meal in for that time, take them to a
wash-room under the fo'c's'le head, where there are
several tanks with running water, and wash them
ready for the next time. But the crowd in the wash-
room after meals was so great that about one third of
the people chose to rinse off the things with a dash
of drinking-water; others never washed their cups
and pans; and still others waited till the next meal
and then washed their kit just before they ate. When
I say that the water supplied for washing kits was
raw sea water and cold at that, any housewife

THE VOYAGE 179

will understand instantly why none of the cups, pans,
spoons, or forks were clean and fit for use after the
first meal, if they were even then. Yet the emigrant
pays half the first-cabin rate for fighting for his food,
serving it himself, and washing his own dishes.

This night we had little trouble, for Antonio and I
understood the order about the groups of six, and we did
everything in order; but the mob was two hours in
getting its supper satisfactorily, by which time that
portion of it which had been hot was unfit to eat.

Just before the bell was rung there came down from
the boat deck a trim young man in the uniform of an
Italian naval officer, and as he passed me I saw that he
was of surgeon's rank and knew he was Dr. Piazza,
the surgeon detailed by the government to the
Prin^essin Irene to look after the welfare of the
emigrants, just as an Italian naval doctor travels on
every emigrant ship leaving Italian ports. The Italian
government does about twenty times as much for the
emigrants as the United States, yet the condition of
health and finance in which they arrive in America is
of concern here and not in Italy, for they become a
part of us. It is to our interests that they should not
be oppressed, underfed, robbed, or given unsanitary
treatment.

The young officer went to the door of the galley.
The chief steerage cook threw a clean towel over the
serving-board that barred it, and on it set clean china
dishes, into which the doctor put portions of each sort
of food, and ate enough to test the quality. He drank
a little of the wine. Every meal thereafter he did the
same thing. I had had the opportunity of watching the
Italian doctor on the Lahn on the voyage to Italy,
and I must say that both men did their work in a most

i8o IMPORTED AMERICANS

commendable manner. As to the food itself, it was
in its quality as good as the average Italian gets at
home, but the manner in which it was messed into
one heap in the big pan was nothing short of nauseat-
ing. Every pound of food and ounce of drink is
regulated by Italian law, both as to amount per day
and proportion of kind and variety. If there was a
failure to live up to the law on the Lahn and
Prin^essin Irene, it was in the wine and fish.

Giovanni Pulejo was chosen capo di rancio of our
family group, and Nicola Curro, the little cabinet-
maker and trombonist, headed the one in which were
Nunzio Giunta, Gaetano Mullura, and the other Gualtieri-
Sicamino and Socosa boys, while Giuseppe Rota from
Avellino, who had joined us at Naples, headed a third
group. The others were divided among groups of
other friends.

On the occasion of this first meal the emigrants be-
gan doing what is the bane of life in the steerage;
throwing the refuse from their meal on the deck in-
stead of over the side or into the scuppers. It being
the first night out of port, the deck watch was too
busy securing derricks, storing mooring-gear, and
putting the ship to rights, to scrub the deck with hose
and soogey-mougie when supper was over, so that I
remember traversing the main deck on the port side
about eleven o'clock that night much as I would cross
a slippery glacier, for it was covered with a layer of
unctuous filth that made footing very uncertain.

It was an extremely hot night, and, though I was
weary almost to exhaustion, the air in the crowded
compartment was so foul that I could not sleep. The
men and boys about me lay for the most part like
logs, hats, coats, and shoes off, and no more, sleeping

THE VOYAGE 181

the sleep of the ineffably tired. I rolled and tossed on
the hard pallet till at last I went on deck, and, seeking
a deeply shaded corner on a hatch, I sat watching
the sea and the night. Possibly twenty minutes had
passed when from the mouth of the alley-way that
led to the companion-way of the women's compart-
ment a figure emerged and made its way forward
cautiously; for after certain hours all steerage passen-
gers are supposed to be below decks. As the figure
came near me, I saw that it was my wife. She, too,
had been unable to breathe the air below, and had
stolen up, bringing with her a heavy shawl. She said
the babies in her compartment were crying in relays
of six, and that she had had a grand row with the
women of the group who occupied the section of
bunks next to the women of our party.

The trouble arose over the filthy habits of the other
women. They were Neapolitans of the lowest class,
and when they were eating their supper had chosen
to portion it out while they sat in their bunks, and the
result was that bits of macaroni, meat, and potatoes
were scattered all over their beds, the beds of their
neighbors, and on the floor. The other women who
were minded to be cleanly made no protest, merely
looking askance, but my wife interposed. She brought
down a storm of Neapolitan vituperation on her head.

The climax came when the Neapolitans, too lazy to
take their dishes up on deck to wash them, rinsed
them with a cupful of drinking-water in bed and then
endeavored to pour water and pertaining refuse out
of the port-hole. A little girl of eleven was engi-
neering the job, and, regardless of the fact that her
shoes were filthy with deck slime, used my wife's bed
as a step to climb up to the port-hole, where, failing

182 IMPORTED AMERICANS

to get all the water and waste outside, she allowed
the remainder to spill inside, down the wall and on
the edges of the two nearest beds. I do not know
just what happened, but I have an adequate fancy,
and at least there was no more dish-washing or filth-
spilling in that corner of the compartment.

Just as we had observed on the Lahn, the men of
the emigrants were reasonably cleanly, as were also
about two thirds of the women; but the other third
were so grossly dirty that they littered every place
they passed in a way that the sailors and stewards
would not have been able to keep pace with even had
they put forth their best efforts, which they certainly
did not. All of the other steerage passengers, a
majority by far, had to submit to the reign of unclean-
liness.

I have not told the worst by any means. It could
not be put in print. The remedy for the whole mat-
ter is to pack fewer people in the same ship's space,
and a regular service of food at tables. The chief
stewards of ships will cry, "How can i.oooor 1,500
people be served at tables ? " A perfect argument; but
no such number should ever be carried. If the English
lines going out to the Cape and Australia can give
closed cabins with served meals for a proportionately
less third-class rate than the Transatlantic lines, the big
emigrant-carriers can do it, and should be forced to
give up a part of their profits, which are enormous, in
order that sanitary conditions at least may prevail.

It was nearing morning when we were found by the
deck watch and driven below. The air was far worse
than when I had gone up, but in about half an hour
the wind shifted from the quarter to the bow and of
course to its velocity was added that of the ship, so

THE VOYAGE 183

that a fair draught was set going below decks, and I
fell asleep.

The noise made by the men and boys about awoke
me in little more than an hour later, and the second
day of the voyage was begun.

CHAPTER XV

THE VOYAGE— Continued

IT was a gray threatening morning when I came
on deck. The boys of our party came up one by
one, and were a very ill-pleased lot indeed when
they found that if they wished to wash even their faces
and hands they must use the salt water in the scullery-
rooms forward, or else be content with half a tin cup-
ful of drinking-water, for at the drinking-water taps a
sailor was constantly stationed to prevent any one from
taking more than was enough for drinking. In a short
while, though, they learned to go often for a drink
during the day, and save what they did not want in
empty wine-bottles, unused flask-buckets, etc., and
with care they secured enough for facial ablutions each
morning. As for those fellow-passengers who were
not overfond of washing, the scarcity of water was
seized as an excuse for not washing at all.

About eight o'clock the steerage cooks and stewards
served "biscuits" and coffee. The latter was what
might be expected. The first named was a disk
of dough, three quarters of an inch thick, and a
hand's length broad. It was as hard as a landlord's
heart, and as tasteless as a bit of rag carpet. The
worst of it was that about half the biscuits were
moldy. About some 3,000 were served out, and for
the next half hour disks went sailing high in the air
over the sides and into the sea. Three times on the
voyage were the biscuits moldy: considered from the

MID-VOYAGE SCENES

Mora — Syrian Jews — Prostrated by the Swell — Children
Escaping Seasickness

THE VOYAGE 185

Egan War Department commissary standpoint that is
not bad.

I gathered our party in the lee of No. 2 hatch, and
we breakfasted on food from the store brought from
home, eked out with the coffee and the two sound
biscuits we received. We used a corkscrew to separate
the biscuit into edible fragments

After breakfast the crowds on deck took to mirth
and song. Mouth-organs, tambourines, and accordions
were produced, and it became evident that it would
take a great deal to long repress the resilient Italian
spirit. Before an hour had passed every man who had
a set of lotto cards and numbered disks had started a
game in some corner sheltered from the wind. A real
Gulf of Lyons blow was coming on slowly, and I
knew a few hours would see an end of the merriment.
So far the ship was as steady as a dead man's stare.

The dinner-bell rang, and the crowd, since it was
happy, very, very hungry, and not at all sea-wise, ate
to repletion of the fare, which was about the same as
that of supper the night before, only being ladled out
with more care. I warned our people that since they
were where they were, and not engaged in their usual
toil and exercise, and since it was likely to be rough,
they should not eat very much. All obeyed except
Camela, Concetta, Ina, and little Nastasia. They ate till
the big pan was empty.

After the meal Ina quizzed me as to why the ship
floated.

" What does it sit on while it runs along ? "

"The water."

"Just water ? No rails ? "

"No. It is water and nothing else for half a mile
down."

i86 IMPORTED AMERICANS

She thought soberly a minute, and then her big eyes
brightened.

"Oh, I know why there are so many children on the
ship. If they were all big folks they would be so
heavy they would make it sink, wouldn't they?"

In an hour the sea increased from a small jubble to a
short swell, and the crowds on deck began to grow
silent. As my wife and I walked about watching
faces growing pale, it was a study indeed. Those who
have known the first throes of seasickness will under-
stand why these poor people grew sorely afraid. If it
had not been for the jesting of those who had crossed
before, or who were inured to a reeling deck, they
would have been almost panic-stricken. Our party, all
except Nunzio Giunta, my wife, and myself, wilted
before the wave.

In fifteen minutes two thirds of the crowd had hur-
ried below, and the other third were a sight to behold.
I made Camela and Concetta, who were deathly sick
as a result of their over-indulgence at dinner, stay up
in the rushing air until both were unable to hold up
their heads. Concetta's heart-action was very bad, and
it seemed best to get her to bed, so Nunzio Giunta
shouldered one and I the other, and though the ship
was rolling savagely by this time we managed to get
them aft and below. As I came back after Ina, she
was crying beside Antonio, who was very sick indeed.

"What is the matter, Ina?" I said.

"O, Uncle Berto, I'm all sicked, and I'm going to
die, 'n' they '11 throw me overboard, 'n' I '11 never see
Giuseppe " [her father].

For the emigrants it was a frightful afternoon, and
the compartments below and the deck above were in
a condition that is beyond the scope of any tale.

THE VOYAGE 187

At supper time about one sixth of the crowd lined
up to get rations. So many of the capo di rancio
phalanx were sick that nearly all of those who did
draw rations did it on borrowed tickets. I saw one
man get the full portion for six. The others of his
group were unable to touch a mouthful, so he sat down
in a corner out of the wind and ate every particle. It
was a gastronomic feat worthy of record.

The worst feature of this stormy afternoon was that
the ship's officers chose it as the time to deliver to the
emigrants the passports which had been taken from
them for inspection by the police in the Capitaneria at
Naples. It was also made the occasion of the " count-
ing of noses, "when it was made sure that Caterina
Fancetti No. 214, and Giovanni Masuolo No. 468, etc.,
were duly aboard. Since the United States authorities
exact a fine of $200 from any ship which delivers less
emigrants to the Ellis Island or other port authorities
than the ship's manifest shows to have been aboard,
the ship's people take great care that for every number
and name they have on the manifest there is an emi-
grant to deliver.

This would have been all well and proper the next
day, for instance, but this afternoon one half of the
steerage passengers were so wretchedly sick that it
was nothing short of cruelty to compel them to get up
out of their beds and come up on deck, where they
were passed in line before the officers, and the pass-
ports were delivered as names and numbers were
answered and checked off.

Nunzio Giunta, who had no qualm of seasickness,
attended to getting Antonio and the men and boys up,
while I went below for the women. They were in a
condition that was truly pitiable. Concetta's white

i88 IMPORTED AMERICANS

face had a purple tinge in it, and she lay gasping for
breath; her heart-action really dangerous. Camela
could scarcely lift her head. The steerage stewards in
their dirt-smeared working rigs were in the compart-
ment, pushing, shoving, jerking, and cursing the
women and children to get them out and up the com-
panion-way. The result of their efforts was to clear
the place of those who were not too sick to go readily,
but the large number that remained in bed were not
given any great length of respite. One of the stewards
came around with a stick, a piece of pine box, rapped
on the sides of the bunk, and poked them with it, and
soon they were herded at the foot of the steps, where
the greater number of them sank down in a heap, un-
able to attempt to force their way up through those
who had dropped down on the stairs. My wife and I
contrived to get Camela and Concetta up the com-
panion-way. The others were able to help themselves.
In the alley-way we found a state of things of which
it is as revolting to write as it is to read. There was
not a spot on which it was fit to step, yet here was
jammed a mass of sick women and children, many of
them sunk down against the wall. The officers were
not yet through with the people coming up from the
next compartment forward, and so two sailors were
guarding the door to prevent any more women com-
ing out. I contrived to work Concetta through to the
door, and just outside the portal, in order that she
might get the air, and in so doing placed some ten feet
between my wife and myself.

Just then there came along one of the steerage
cooks, bearing a big can of supplies from the store-
room. There was no room for him to pass in the
alley-way. He cried out in German for the people to

THE VOYAGE 189

make way for him, but of course they did not under-
stand, and were too closely packed to do so even if
they had. He was a big fellow of a very brutal type,
and when he found that the path was not cleared he
turned his shoulder, drew back, and drove his shoulder
into the mass of women and children. I saw what he
was going to do, but could not reach him. Women
With babies in their arms, children deep down in the
press of their elders, were knocked back in a heap.
One of the women he struck was my wife. Quick as
a flash, she recovered herself and drove a blow straight
from the shoulder, landing under his left ear. One of
the sailors from the outside started in, but I blocked
him. A more surprised man than that steerage cook
it would be difficult to imagine. He went on about
his business very meekly. The women around gazed
at my wife in awe, and one of them asked Camela
later what manner of woman she was to imperil her
chances for admission to the United States by striking
one in authority.

We had chosen the Prin^essin Irene because she is the
largest and best emigrant-carrying ship in the trade,
and the line to which she belongs stands toward the
front among the others in its treatment of the third-
class passengers. People who have crossed many
times and know all the ins and outs of steerage travel
prefer the Lah n or the Prin^essin Irene, so that we knew
we should find the minimum of abuse in her. What
must the conditions be in ships in the northern trade
and in the cheaper ships running from Mediterranean
ports. Almost the only time that the third-class
people were treated as passengers was at the time of
planking down their 200 lire. The men of the crew
were inclined to treat them as inferior beings, to be

190 IMPORTED AMERICANS

knocked and pushed about, and I regret to say they
took their cue from their immediate superiors.

The third day of the voyage was Sunday, and the
weather was improving. The seasick people began
to think life worth clinging to. The capo di rancio
crowd at dinner was nearly the full size. My wife
looked once at the mixture in the big pan and then
turned away. Though I knew what the matter was I
asked her.

" I was just thinking how far, how very far it is to
Martin's," she said with a tremble in her voice.

Knowing full well that there are always secret chan-
nels on board a ship for the getting of food if one has
money, I had been trying every steward, cook, page,
etc., I could corner, and offering ridiculous prices for
something to eat. Not that the food for the steerage
was so bad we could not eat it. We had been eating
it, and we expected to continue to eat it; but we
wanted a supply to fill in with on those occasions when
it was not what we wanted. When I sailed as a
member of the crew in ships of the Hamburg-Amer-
ican and American lines, a very good source of rev-
enue to the cooks and stewards was the secret sale of
food to the third-class passengers who had money.
On the Lahn we had been able to buy everything we
wished. The trouble on the Prin^essin Irene on this
voyage was that the inspector was aboard. At last,
however, I found a petty officer who had a cabin
down the alley- way, and I "persuaded" him. The
result was a sudden and gracious increase in our com-
forts in all that one could expect in the steerage. The
only drawback was the necessity for extreme care in
coming and going.

In the Sunday afternoon chatting around deck, where

Half a Dozen Races on Common Ground — His Broth-
cup — The Immigrant Madonna

THE VOYAGE 191

the people sat on the hatches, the deck, the winches,
in fact, anywhere they could get, there being no place
in the entire steerage section that was distinctly in-
tended for sitting down, I found numbers of people
who had squeezed through the examination at Naples
by little hooks and crooks.

Monday morning we were nearing Gibraltar. The
peaked rock rose up out of the clouds in the west
nearly an hour before we slid around Europa Point
and came to anchor with the fortress frowning upon us
and British warships lying all about. The tender of
the company steamed out at once, bringing passengers
and mail, and into the steerage there came quite a
number of Spaniards, Portuguese, a Moor or two,
etc. The bumboat-men swarmed about the ship on
both sides, and came up and over the rail like mon-
keys, hauling up stuff from their boats in baskets.

By the knuckles of Mars! What a joy to get good
Dutch, Havana, and Egyptian tobacco once more. In
Italy the government so monopolizes the sale of
tobacco that the demand for good cigars and pipe
tobacco is very slight; therefore to find anything fit to
smoke in a strange city is like hunting up lost heirs.
When one does get a good Havana cigar in Rome it is
as dry as an undertaker's eye.

In addition to tobacco we laid in here a good supply
of fruit and nuts, and if it had not been for our very
limited baggage could have driven some fine bargains
in smuggled goods.

While we lay there taking in the last lighter-loads of
freight, the hatches were open and the crew at work
on deck, so that, with all the emigrants up from the
compartments to see the sights, the space forward of
the hurricane deck was one seething, jostling mass of

192 IMPORTED AMERICANS

people. I improved the opportunity to get my kodak
out while the sun was bright and the ship still, and
had climbed up on a refrigerator by the forward rail of
the hurricane deck, and with my camera hidden was
waiting my chance to get a group without having them
all looking at the lens. I had given out my occupation
as photographer to explain to the ship's people and my
fellow-passengers my possession and use of a camera.
They are not often seen in the steerage. As I stood
there two men and two women from among the first-
class passengers came by and paused at the rail to look
down on the steerage crowd. The one man, a well-
fed elderly person, I have since ascertained is an in-
fluential Western banker and politician. One woman
is his wife, the other woman a friend of the first,
while the other man is an architect of some repute.

Said Mrs. Banker: " Dear me, just see all those chil-
dren. What dirty little imps they are."

A tin-cupful of drinking-water to cleanse a family of
faces !

Answered Mrs. Banker's friend: "Oh, terrible to
think of admitting such people wholesale into the United
States. Just look at the slovenly dresses of those
women, wrinkled and dirty — ugh."

Sleeping in one's skirts does not improve their fresh-
ness!

"Yes, yes," observed the architect, "there ought to
be a stop put to it: they are a menace to our civilization."

His grandfather came over to Montreal in the coop
of a French sailing-ship about 1840.

"These Italians are the worst of the lot. They are
a dangerous element. Stick a knife in you in a minute.
Look at that villainous-looking fellow standing right
here on this box, smoking a cigar."

THE VOYAGE 193

The Wise and Superior Four turned their eyes on
me, for it was I the banker meant. He went on.

" There is a fair sample of your Mafia member.
Criminal ? Why, criminal instinct is written in every
line of his head and face. See the bravado in the way
he holds his shoulders and the nasty look in his uneasy
eyes. I '11 bet he has a bad record a yard long behind
him in Italy, and he will double the length of it in
America. By George, I should hate to meet that man
at night in a lonesome spot."

I could not resist the temptation. I stepped over to
the other end of the box, within a few feet of him,
looked up, and said:

" Pardon me ; but you are one of the fools who are not
safe from their own errors, even in a day light throng."

At noon I had an opportunity for which I had been
waiting: fine, high sunlight on a dinner crowd, and
the purser in charge.

This man was a huge fellow, tall and heavy, as power-
ful as an ox, and one would have thought the two silver
stripes on his sleeve were the decorations of a Czar.
At every meal, when he superintended the ladling out
to the capo di rancio corps and their helpers, he had
taken upon himself the handling of the crowd. He
had no set system of lining them up as the men on the
Lahn had, but would pick out groups of three and four
as the fancy occurred to him and pass them on to the
servers, pouring forth a flood of directions, commands,
and oaths in German which of course no one but his
own men understood. His use of Italian seemed to be
limited to "Avanti! Avanti!" which seemed to mean
to him, "Hurry up!" "Come on!" "Stand back
there!" "Let me pass!" " That is enough! " "Come
back here! " " Don 't push! " — and forty other things.

194 IMPORTED AMERICANS

The crowd in the rear always pushed the front ranks
up nearer the entrance to the " Lane of Food," as the
Italians dubbed it, and this seemed to irritate the Czar
immeasurably. Forgetting that it was all the fault of
his lack of system and constant change of method,
he would charge into the press like an angry bull, and
clear a lane through them by hurling his own huge
bulk into the mass of human beings.

The unfortunate feature of this was that the Italians,
with their natural deference, allowed the women and
children who were doing capo di rancio duty to have
the foremost places. I had seen him hurl about
women with babies in their arms, and children clinging
to their skirts, as if they were mere bundles of rags,
and I determined that he should be reckoned with, and,
as evidence, sought a photograph of one of his charges
in the very act.

Taking a position on the top after rail of the fo'c's'le
head on the port side, I set the shutter at one fifteenth
of a second and gave the diaphragm a sixteen opening.
One of the pictures I took, which is herewith repro-
duced, tells its own story.

As we sailed away from Gibraltar on a smooth sea,
the steerage, well-fed on bumboat delicacies, gathered
on the main deck and fo'c's'le head, and games of
lotto, cards, and mora, the guessing game, were soon
in progress on every hand. Here and there groups
were singing or struggling with a few simple sentences
in English. Gaetano Mullura and several of the boys
were gathered about my wife, and she was teaching
them how to count money and ask for something to
eat, two of the essentials in America. Gaetano and
Felicio Pulejo saved one sentence mass of new in-
formation: "Give me some bread, please," — but lost

LIFE ABOARD THE PRINZESSIN IRENE

Men's Sleeping-quarters — Ladling out Food — The Purser

Hurling Passengers About — On the Fo'c's'1-head

THE VOYAGE 195

the "some," the "please," and the expression in the
shuffle. All during the voyage they went about ob-
serving to their admiring fellow-passengers:

"Gifa me bret," or "Gifa me meat."

There were scores of musical instruments among the
steerage people, and an impromptu band was gotten
up. It might have been worse.

The next morning all the steerage passengers were
sent below after breakfast, and allowed to stay for two
hours in the reeking crowded compartments, while
the health inspection was made by the ship's doctor as
prescribed by law. The doctor and an officer stood by
each companion-way in turn, and as the men and boys,
then the women and children, poured up, a steward
punched their health tickets, the same which bore the
name, ship's manifest number, vaccination stamp, and
sheet of manifest letter. It was the second time this
was done, and we had been four days at sea.

The next day was very rough, and the following
one a beautiful season in which we spent the greater
portion of the time watching the picturesque Azores as
we glided along so close to the shores that the people
at their work in the vineyards and gardens were very
plainly seen. All about were little fishing-boats with
half-naked boatmen who stood up and shouted to us.
There was another medical inspection that day.

The next day, the gth of October, marked a heavy
gale, and, despite the size of the ship, quite a bit of
water came aboard. The decks were almost deserted,
and wherever the seasick women and children were
gathered they were for the most part prostrated on the
planks. Below decks there were music and song close
by where fellow-passengers were in terrible suffering
from vaccination and seasickness. Fortunately the

196 IMPORTED AMERICANS

high wind ventilated the compartments sufficiently to
make them bearable. I found my left arm beginning
to swell and throb, and by midnight it was in very bad
condition. The little trick of rubbing off the virus in
Naples had failed to work, because I was so anxious
to get a photograph that I had done it carelessly.

In my talks with the men below, this day, I found a
man who has two wives, one in Italy and one in Amer-
ica, and did not seem to consider any very great harm
done. He looked at the matter from no standpoint of
sentiment, merely from one that was utterly practical.
In investigations since that time I have found that there
are many Italians in America who have wives and
families on both sides of the water, and if there are
many Italians there are more Jews and Germans.

I also found a man who lives in Pittsburg, who had
just been home to Messina to get himself a wife. His
family sent him one from home, but he went down to
Ellis Island to meet her, and was informed that he
must marry her then and there before she could be
admitted. Since the photograph of her that had been
sent him for approval was taken when she was four-
teen, and she had changed very much at twenty, he
fled the place and allowed the Ellis Island authorities to
deport her. Now he had gone home and married her
younger sister. He is employed by the Pennsylvania
Railroad on a section job at $45 a month and perquisites,
and had arranged while in Messina for ten men to leave
on the Liguria, the next ship sailing. They were
"recommended" to friends in Pittsburg, but he had
paid their fare and had promised them work. He had
been twelve years in the country. Thus is the contract-
labor law evaded.

Some time this day Guiseppe Rota had stolen from

THE VOYAGE 197

him seventy lire, money which it was most desirable
for him to have on entering the United States, as prov-
ing him not likely to become a public charge, and he
was wild with the fear of being sent back. I assured
him that I would take care of him, but from that hour
he followed me everywhere I went, like a big New-
foundland dog, and until the moment I delivered him
into the hands of his friends in New Jersey he was a
most unhappy mortal.

The night was extremely stormy, and the tons of
water that fell on deck shook the ship so much that
few of the emigrants slept. A priest who was voy-
aging in the steerage in mufti sat up with a group of
friends in a corner, praying, and all the men of our
party alternately moaned and prayed. The pain in my
arm inspired me to anything but words indicative of a
religious state of mind.

About two o'clock the Italian commissario, the naval
surgeon, came down and made an inspection. He
found five men very sick in one corner, and discovered
a drain there which a lazy steward had allowed to be-
come choked. The corner was worse than a pigpen,
and some of the things that commissario said and did
raised him higher in my esteem than ever.

In the morning I was myself in such a state that I
made my way down at ten o'clock to the hospital, the
companion-way of which lay just abaft that leading to
the women's compartment. There the Italian commis-
sario had over fifty sick men, women, and children
awaiting his care. I waited till the last, in order to
observe the manner of handling the patients. It was
expeditious, thorough, and gentle, and all of the pa-
tients whom I questioned later said that the German
doctor was not to be compared with Dr. Piazza.

CHAPTER XVI

HEARING THE GATE

SUNDAY fell on the nth, and it was a pleasant
day till afternoon, when it began to get rough.
The ship's band was sent forward to play on
the hurricane deck, in order to cheer up the emigrants,
many of whom were beginning to look very badly,
and to endeavor to brace them up till port could be
reached; for it is a great saving to the company to take
as many passengers as possible to Ellis Island in a good
state of health.

On this day occurred another medical inspection; and
to make all of the health tickets appear to have been
properly punched as each passenger was inspected day
by day, a steward whom I had heard called Beppo
went about and carefully punched any vacant spaces.
As neither my wife nor myself had gone by for the
last three of the four health inspections, having missed
the call by being busy eating in the petty officer's
cubby, Beppo punched out the full twelve days of the
voyage at one punching. When those tickets were
presented at Ellis Island there was nothing to show
that their bearers had not been properly inspected each
day.

That night Beppo and two other stewards, who were
on watch below, went into the women's compartment
and drank some wine that had been brought aboard by
a Spanish woman of uncertain character, and in a short
while a small orgie was in progress. About six per-

NEARING THE GATE 199

sons participated. The other women finally roused to
protest, and the stewards addressed them in language
that is not fit to be stated here, and continued until
they were ready to quit.

In the morning the warmth of the Gulf Stream began
to stir the chilled blood of all hands, and the first sail
sighted since the Azores caused the poor emigrants to
rejoice, as it was a token that they were nearing
America. In a slow way the Italian provincial songs
which had prevailed changed to American airs, at-
tempted by those who had been in the States. Every-
body seemed happier than they had been for days, and
first-cabin passengers began to appear in numbers on
the forward end of the hurricane deck. Several young
women had brought out little bundles of delicacies,
candy, oranges, apples, etc., and were dropping them
over the rail to the emigrant children below. This
kindly occupation was observed by the first officer,
who was on the bridge, and he came down in haste
and rebuked the first-cabin young women with severity,
and sent the ship's interpreter down to hector the emi-
grant children and their mothers. I wonder what he
would have said had he known the quantities of first-
cabin fare that was being smuggled to emigrants by
the stewards and cooks every day.

That night we saw Nantucket light, and from that on
my wife and I counted the hours. We arrived too late
the night of the i3th to go up the harbor, and so pro-
ceeded slowly so as to reach Quarantine by eight
o'clock on the morning of the i4th.

The night before, the joy among the emigrants that
they were reaching the Promised Land was pitiful to
see, mingled as it was with the terrible dread of being
debarred.

200 IMPORTED AMERICANS

There was little sleeping all night. About twelve
o'clock the women woke up the sleeping children,
opened their packs, and took out finery on top of finery,
and began to array the little ones to meet their fathers.
My wife pleaded with Camela to stay in her bunk and
wait for daylight at least, but Camela could not under-
stand why she should wait, and at three o'clock little
Ina was brought up on deck arrayed in her very best,
and as clean as her mother could make her with a
small bottle of water and a skirt combination wash-rag
and towel.

By six o'clock all the baggage in the compartments
had been hauled out and up on deck, and the hundreds
of emigrants were gathered there, many trying to shave,
others struggling for water in which to wash, and
mothers who had been unable to dress their children to
their satisfaction in the cramped quarters below were
doing the job all over again, despite the chill air.

Happy, excited, enthusiastic as they were, there was
still that dread among the people of the "Batteria,"
the name used to sum up all that pertains to Ellis
Island. I saw more than one man with a little slip of
notes in his hand carefully rehearsing his group in all
that they were to say when they came up for examina-
tion, and by listening here and there I found that hun-
dreds of useless lies were in preparation. Many, many
persons whose entry into the country would be in no
way hindered by even the strictest enforcement of the
letter of the emigration laws, were trembling in their
shoes, and preparing to evade or defeat the purpose of
questions which they had heard would be put to them.

Some of the people who had confided in me came
around even two or three times to ask me whether I
thought they looked at all "sick in the eyes." One

NEARING THE GATE 201

woman who fancied that her baby had trachoma
gorged the child all that day in an effort to get it asleep
and keep it asleep, so that the doctor should pass it
without examining it, as she was prepared to protest
against its being waked up.

More than once I heard leaders of groups telling
men:

" Remember, you have got no work and you paid
your own way."

" Oh, but they will not let me in if they think I have
no work and will have no money to keep my family
from charity," protested one fellow whom I knew was
under promise of work.

" That makes no difference; you are a jackass not to
do as I tell you; don't you think I know my busi-
ness ?" was the answer he received.

One man whom I knew to be of independent means
and in no wise an unfit person under the law to be ad-
mitted was going about in a very nervous state, his
hand constantly on some papers in his breast pocket.
I had talked with him before, and he had told me he
had had a store in Salerno. Now I approached him
and drew him into conversation about the land already
in sight, and before long he drew out the papers he
had in his pocket. In addition to his passport and his
regular ticket of health he had the naturalization papers
of a full-fledged American citizen. The name on them
was not the name on his ticket of health, and which
would be the same on the ship's manifest, and I told
him that if he endeavored to use the naturalization pa-
pers at the docks he would certainly get into trouble.
He was greatly frightened and was very suspicious of
me, so much so that I was unable to get any further
information out of him. I found one of his friends

202 IMPORTED AMERICANS

aboard who was a man of more experience, and after
telling him just what lay before the Salerno man if he
attempted to use the naturalization papers, I persuaded
him to find out where and how the Salerno man got
them. In half an hour he came back and said the Sa-
lerno man was below, weeping, and ready to commit
suicide, but had told him that he had gone with three
other men to a man in the first wine-shop on the
Strada del Duomo off the Strada Nuova in Naples, and
had paid fifty lire each for American citizens' papers
brought home by returning emigrants, and the four
were to receive fifteen lire each if they returned them
after use. The three other men had sailed on the
Citta diNapoli.

Numbers of the people were privately taking out
and setting aside varying sums from their slender
stores of money, with which to "pay something to
the American inspector and American doctor." So ac-
customed were they to extortion by officials, that they
refused to believe me when I told them that it would
cease at Ellis Island. They were astounded and deeply
puzzled when it did.

Giuseppe Rota followed me wherever I went, for I
had promised to lend him the money to replace his
stolen seventy lire, and though we were hours and
hours yet from Ellis Island he was afraid the ship
would dock at any moment, a giant in the uniform of
an American immigrant inspector would appear and
demand to see twelve dollars, and I would be out of
sight, in which case he would be locked up and sent
back.

As we approached Sandy Hook the alternate glee
and depression of the groups were pathetic. Even
Antonio was trembling with excitement and said to

NEARING THE GATE 203

me: " Suppose they will not let me back in. Can't I
tell them just to telephone up to my bank in Stoning-
ton, and they will tell them that I got a wife and prop-
erty there, and it will be all right." Camela's tears
were constantly ready to fall, for there dwelt in her
heart a dread that something would arise to prevent
her reunion with Giuseppe.

The steerage stewards and the interpreter under the
direction of a junior officer appeared and ordered all
the steerage passengers to pass up from the forward
main deck to the hurricane deck and aft, leaving their
baggage just where it was. Wild commotion broke
forth, for this was preparatory action at last. Slowly
the chattering, excited hundreds were got aft and
crowded into the space usually given to second-cabin
passengers, and after a long wait there, while we ap-
proached Quarantine, and the port doctor's boat came
out, and the Chamberlain carrying the Ellis Island
boarding-officers and a newspaper man or two, there
were cries forward along the hurricane deck which in-
dicated that the crowd was being passed back to steer-
age quarters.

1 knew we were about to pass before the port doc-
tor's deputy and the boarding-officers, and got our
party together and into the line passing forward along
the promenade deck. As we approached the forward
end we saw the dour German doctor standing with a
gray-whiskered man in uniform, on whose cap front
was the welcome gold-thread eagle design of the
United States service. As we came nearly abreast of
them I saw another official on the right-hand side, and
turned my head slightly to see what was occurring on
that side of the line. I caught a glimpse of steerage
stewards beyond the officials, hurrying the emigrants

204 IMPORTED AMERICANS

down the companion-way, and the next instant re-
ceived a heavy raking blow on the bridge of my nose
and up my forehead. It partly stunned and dazed me,
and I was merely conscious of stumbling on and of
having the spectacles which I wore for reading or dis-
tance-viewing hanging by the hook over one ear. Be-
fore. I could even see, I was at the head of the com-
panion-way, and the stewards were hustling my wife
down the steps. 1 gathered from what she was say-
ing that the German doctor had struck me, and, turn-
ing to look at him, saw he was looking after me with
a sneer on his face. To go back would have been to
spoil my investigations just at the last stage, and with
a lamb-like meekness I went below, where my wife
told how, having uncovered my head, as is the rule in
passing the doctor, I had replaced my hat a second too
soon as I turned to look to the right, and the German
doctor had reached over her head and struck me with
the back of his wrist, inflicting a heavy blow under the
pretense of brushing my hat from my head.

CHAPTER XVII

WITHIN THE PORTALS OF THE NEW WORLD

WHEN the inspection was finished, the great
steamer got under way once more, and in
the glorious sunlight of mid-forenoon we
steamed up between South Brooklyn andStaten Island,
with the shipping, the houses, and the general contour
of the harbor very plainly to be seen. On every hand
were exclamations among the immigrants over the
oddity of wooden-built houses, over the beauty of the
Staten Island shore places; and when the gigantic sky-
scrapers of lower Manhattan came into view, a strange
serrated line against the sky, the people who had been
to America before cried out in joyful tones and pointed.
A low murmur of wonder was heard from the new-
comers. Nunzio Giunta, at my elbow, said :

" Antonio told the truth."

Then there was a rush to port to see the Statue of
Liberty, and when all had seen it they stood with their
eyes fixed for some minutes on the great beacon
whose significance is so much to them, standing within
the portals of the New World and proclaiming the lib-
erty, justice, and equality they had never known, pro-
claiming a life in which they have an opportunity such
as never could come to them elsewhere.

The majority of the immigrants aboard who had been
over before had landed previously at the Battery, and
few knew Ellis Island to be the immigrant station, so
that comparatively little attention was paid to it. An-

206 IMPORTED AMERICANS

other odd thing was the effect the sight of the magnif-
icence of New York had on the people who were
destined for Western and New England points. More
than one expressed a desire to remain in New York.
If it be considered that nine out of every ten immi-
grants are of rural birth, and that the city is always
most fascinating to country people, it can be under-
stood why immigrants are so prone to congregate in
the cities aside from the considerations of convenience
to labor and opportunities for small trading. I have
found many Jews who went out of New York on their
first trip, and on their second stayed in the city, return-
ing with their entire families and with all plans made
for a permanent residence in the metropolis.

In what seemed a very short space of time we had
steamed up the harbor, up North River, and were be-
ing warped into the North German Lloyd piers in Ho-
boken. There were only a few people down to meet
friends of the third-class, but the usual crowd awaited
the first-cabin passengers. Some of the Italians bore
extra overcoats to give to the shivering "greenhorns,"
as they call them, — an American word which is cur-
rent throughout the south of Italy and in the Italian
quarters of American cities.

What seemed to the eager immigrants an unreason-
ably long time of waiting passed while the customs
officers were looking after the first-class passengers and
they were leaving the ship. When the way was clear,
word was passed forward to get the immigrants ready
to debark. First, however, Boarding Inspector Vance
held a little tribunal at the rail forward on the hurri-
cane deck, at which all persons who had citizens'
papers were to present them. I watched him carefully
as he proceeded with his task of picking out genuine

Part of the Author's Party— All Eyes to the Statue of Liberty

WITHIN THE PORTALS 207

citizens from the other sort and allowing them to leave
the ship at the docks; and if all officials are as
thorough and as careful as he, then is the law en-
forced to its limit, and the many evasions of it which
seem to exist are things no official or set of officials can
prevent operating on this side of the water. Here,
again, I could not help seeing that deceit, evasion, and
trickery were possible, inasmuch as the inspector can
only take the papers on the face of them, together
with the immigrant's own statement; and if the gangs
who smuggle aliens in on borrowed, transferred, or
forged citizens' papers have been careful enough in
preparing and coaching their pupils, there is no way of
apprehending the fraud at the port of arrival, nor
would there be at the port of embarkation; but there
would be no chance for any such practices if the ex-
aminations were made in the community of the immi-
grant's residence.

Those whose citizenship was doubted by the
inspector, and who had their families with them,
were compelled to go to Ellis Island with them, or
allow the families to go through the process alone.

At last we were summoned to pass aft and ashore.
One torrent of humanity poured up each companion-
way to the hurricane deck and aft, while a third stream
went through the main deck alley-way, all lugging
the preposterous bundles. The children, seeing suffi-
cient excitement on foot to incite them to cry, and
being by this time very hungry, began to yell with
vigor. A frenzy seemed to possess some of the peo-
ple as groups became separated. If a gangway had
been set to a rail-port forward, there would have been
little of the hullabaloo, but for a time it was frightful.

The steerage stewards kept up their brutality to the

208 IMPORTED AMERICANS

last. One woman was trying to get up the companion-
way with a child in one arm, her deck chair brought
from home hung on the other, which also supported
a large bundle. She blocked the passage for a mo-
ment. One of the stewards stationed by it reached
up, dragged her down, tore the chair off her arm,
splitting her sleeve as he did so and scraping the skin
off her wrist, and in his rage he broke the chair into a
dozen pieces. The woman passed on sobbing, but
cowed and without a threat.

As we passed down the gangway an official stood
there with a mechanical checker numbering the pas-
sengers, and uniformed dock watchmen directed the
human flood pouring off the ship where to set down
the baggage to await customs inspection.

The scene on the pier had something impressive in it,
well worthy of a painter of great human scenes. The
huge enclosed place, scantily lighted by a few aper-
tures, and massive with great beams and girders, was
piled high in some places with freight, and over all
the space from far up near the land end, where a
double rope was stretched to prevent immigrants from
escaping without inspection, down to the pier head,
where the big door was open to allow the immigrants
to pass out and aboard the barges waiting to convey
them down the river again to Ellis Island, was covered
with immigrants, customs inspectors, special Treasury
detectives, Ellis Island officials, stevedores, ship's peo-
ple, dock watchmen, and venders of apples, cakes,
etc.

The dock employees were all German, some of them
speaking very little English, and none that I saw using
Italian. While their plan of keeping the immigrants in
line in order to facilitate the inspection of baggage was

WITHIN THE PORTALS 209

all very good and quite the proper thing, the brutal
method in which they enforced it was nothing short
of reprehensible. The natural family and neighbor-
hood groups were separated, and a part of the bag-
gage was dumped in one place and a part in another.
When the dock men had herded the off-coming immi-
grants in a mass along the south side of the pier with
an overflow meeting forward of the gangway on the
north, it was the natural thing for the parties to begin
to hunt for each other, and for leaders of groups to
endeavor to assemble the baggage. Women ran
about crying, seeking their children. Men with
bunches of keys hurried hither and thither searching
for the trunks to match in order to open them for cus-
toms inspection, and children fearsomely huddled in
the heaps of baggage, their dark eyes wide with alarm.
The dock men exhorted the people in German and
English to remain where they were, and, when the
eager Italians did not understand, pushed them about,
belabored them with sticks, or seized them and thrust
them forcibly back into the places they were trying to
leave.

One massive German speaking good English was
endeavoring to prevent our party from going to the
spot where we saw our baggage, and where the cus-
toms inspectors were already at work. Camela and
Concetta were in advance, Antonio was assembling
the hand baggage, and my wife was guarding the
camera, inoperative here for lack of light, so that there
was no one with the party that understood German
or English.

"Get back there, get back there!" he shouted in
English.

" I must go unlock my trunks," said Camela in

210 IMPORTED AMERICANS

Italian, understanding from his gesture that she was
called to a halt.

" I'll knock the brains out of a few of you dirty

— with this club. G — your

souls to any way. I '11 break your neck

if you leave that line again, ," etc.

So saying, he thrust his open palm into her face and
forced her back. I got up just in time to set him back
on a fig-case and inform him that we had stood for
brutality on a foreign soil and on shipboard, but we
were through taking it mildly.

"Wot! I'll fix you for buttin' in, you

dago!"

" Hold on, that fellow 's a Secret-Service man. He 's
no dago. He speaks too good English," said another
dock man who hurried up to the first man, who had
risen and was preparing to "do " me.

His manner changed.

" 'Scuse me, mister, but ye see these would

make anybody mad; they ain't got no sense at all,
don't mind what you tell 'em, and 'd run all over
Hoboken if you let 'em."

I gave him a little good advice on how to treat well-
meaning human beings, and we passed on.

In a few minutes we were having one more wrest-
ling-match with the baggage. By this time the cus-
toms men had passed our heap, and when I did get
an inspector and got it looked into, two trunks were
held up for customs charges on account of all the
provender packed in them, and the two musical in-
struments Antonio had bought in Naples were held.
Unfortunately the marks of the prices asked by the
Neapolitan dealer were still on them, and though An-
tonio had got them for just about one third, the customs

Croatians and Italians — Swedes Arriving — Loading the
Barges, New York

WITHIN THE PORTALS 211

appraiser later set a duty on them that totaled more
than half the original cost. When we were through
with the trunks, we found that the inspectors had
passed over a part of the hand baggage. Two men
standing by offered to mark it with chalk just as the
inspectors mark it to show it has been inspected, and
I was about to allow them to do it and then hand
them over when my wife came up with the camera,
and they turned and hurried away, going aboard the
ship. I think they were either ship's people, or part
of the crew from some other boat at the North German
Lloyd piers.

While we were waiting to get an inspector, we had
time to buy something to eat from the fruit and cake
venders. Though it was mid-October, five cents each
was asked for apples to be bought at any street corner
in New York for one cent, and ten cents a slice for a
thick yellow cake that was the worst mess of coloring-
matter, adulterated flour, and soda, I have ever set
my teeth into. It was as heavy as a stone and
equally gritty. Even the Neapolitan boys would
not eat it. On top of all this, when we paid for
it in Italian silver money, the venders allowed
only seventeen cents for a lire, when taking them at
nineteen cents would have been at a profit. Many
baskets of such food at such prices were sold to the
immigrants that day, for we passed the remainder of
the morning and part of the afternoon on the dock,
there being four ships laden nearly as heavily as ours
in ahead of us, and the barges run by contractors to
carry immigrants from the various docks to Ellis Island
had more than they could do. So we waited. Few
of the people aboard had eaten any breakfast, because
it was rumored among them they would land in

212 IMPORTED AMERICANS

time for breakfast, and they had been looking forward
to a good meal on shore.

I think it was about two o'clock when we were
finally allowed to go aboard the barges at the end of
the pier. I observed two men following my wife and
myself and surveying us critically. At the gangplank
they stopped us and examined our bit of baggage very
carefully.

"You may save yourself some inconvenience by
telling us who you are," said the one man very cour-
teously to me.

" Who are you ?" I said in broken English, expect-
ing the appearance of some grafting game.

"I am a special customs inspector, and we spotted
you two as queer. What are you ? "

"We are writers making a study of the immigration
question. What did you spot as queer ?"

"We thought you were dagoes all right, but this
lady is the first woman I have ever seen in the steer-
age with such well-kept finger-nails, and we were a
little suspicious."

In the work of hustling the immigrants aboard the
barges the dock men displayed great unnecessary
roughness, sometimes shoving them violently, prod-
ding them with sticks, etc., and one young Apulian
who paused to look around for his father aroused the
ire of the dock man nearest him, who planted a by no
means gentle kick in his fundamentals, observing, —

"Oh, get down there; you're too damned slow!"

One barge with power and another without, if I re-
member correctly, were lashed together, or there may
have been a tug on the outer side of the second craft.
Antonio and Camela, with the larger portion of the
party, were hustled into the second barge, while my

WITHIN THE PORTALS 213

wife and I squeezed into the second, little Ina with us.
The great improvements in the way of heating, seat-
ing, and hospital accommodation for the sick which
Commissioner William Williams and his assistant
Allan Robinson were then making were not yet in
evidence in the barge on which we rode. We had
either to squat on the floor or sit on our baggage,
already mashed and crushed till the point of utter dis-
solution seemed not far away, so we stood up.

Slowly we steamed down the river in mid-after-
noon, and when we reached the slip at Ellis Island we
merely tied up, for there were many barge-loads ahead
of us, and we waited our turn to be unloaded and ex-
amined.

As the second craft cast off and moved away, Ina
saw her mother and Antonio going with it, and the big
tears came into her lovely eyes. She watched them
till they were gone from sight, and then turned away
so that neither my wife nor I could see her face.
Every now and then her sleeve would go up to her
face, but she was very quiet. Soon she turned around,
and the signs of tears were gone, but in a moment
she turned away again. She was struggling bravely
against her wish to cry.

"What is the matter, Ina? "said my wife at last,
when the tears began to roll faster. Ina forced a smile
and said, —

"Oh, nothing truly, except the sun hurts my eyes."

Waiting, waiting, waiting, without food and with-
out water; or, if there was water, we could not get to
it on account of the crush of people. Children cried,
mothers strove to hush them, the musically inclined
sang or played, and then the sun went down while
we waited and still waited. My wife and one of the

214 IMPORTED AMERICANS

boys had walked into the space roped off around
the plank which had been put aboard. Just then
some of the youngsters who had been trying to steal
off the forward end of the barge, boylike, were
chased back by the barge men, one of whom began
rushing and pushing the people in the open space back
into the crowd — a very needless procedure, as there
was no reason why what room there was should not
be utilized.

"What are you doing, mate?" called one of the
other men outside.

"Oh, I'm driving these animals back," and he
swore foully.

Just at that instant he caught my wife by the arm,
menacing her and the . boy with a short bit of board
he had in his hand.

"Take your dirty hands off me this instant," said
my wife, white with anger. The fellow stepped
back, amazed at her resentment and her English.

"Meant no harm, lady," he deprecated. "You've
got to be rough with this bunch. I get so sick
handling these dirty bums coming over here to this
country, I 'm going to get in trouble some time for
rousting 'em, I s'pose."

" If that is so," she answered, "you had better get
another job, for you are not fit to handle even wild
animals, let alone kind-hearted, sensitive people like
these, who are not to be blamed if everything, even
your speech, is strange to them."

Rushing Immigrants on Barges — Inspectors and Immigrants
at Ellis Island

CHAPTER XVHI

THROUGH ELLIS ISLAND

COOPED up in the barge, we waited till the sun
got down into the smoke of Bayonne and
Elizabeth and was a great red ball only, so
dull that the eye could contemplate it pleasantly.
Then came the shadows of night, and we began to
dread that our turn to be disembarked would come so
late that we should either be taken back to the steamer
or be kept on the island until morning. Myriads of
lights were shining in the great buildings. Each time
the old ferry-boat floundered across from the Battery
it brought a crowd of friends of immigrants who had
been summoned from New York and elsewhere to
meet the newly arrived ones. All the races of Europe
seemed to be represented in the crowds on the ferry-
boat as it passed close to us when bound back to the
Battery.

The babies had sobbed themselves to sleep, worn-
out mothers sat with their heads drooped on the chil-
dren they held to their breasts, and among the men
mirth and song had died away, though now and then
a voice would be heard inquiring if any one knew
when or where we would get something to eat.

"All ready for the last Irenes" sang out a voice
somewhere in the darkness up by the buildings, and
there was a clatter of feet overhead and on the wharf.
The doors of the barge were opened. The barge
hands dragged out the plank. The ropes restraining

216 IMPORTED AMERICANS

the crowd were dropped, and the weary hundreds,
shouldering their baggage yet once again, poured out
of the barge on to the wharf. Knowing the way, I
led those of our group who were with my wife and
myself straight to the covered approach to the grand
entrance to the building, and the strange assemblage
of Old World humanity streamed along behind us, an
interesting procession indeed.

When we came to the doorway I halted our section,
and we piled the baggage and waited. Antonio had
all the papers for the Squadritos, and with him also
was Salvatore Biajo, who, thanks to the short-change
game worked on him by the draft-sellers at Naples,
must have some money advanced to him before we
got inside. If the officials there saw me giving him
money they would want to know about it, and I did
not wish to attract attention to myself.

Antonio and Camela were meantime madly hunting
us about the wharf, and just as the official at the door-
way had ordered us to go on in, regardless of the
others, each party caught sight of the other.

Half-way up the stairs an interpreter stood telling the
immigrants to get their health tickets ready, and so I
knew that Ellis Island was having " a long day " and
we were to be passed upon even if it took half the night.
The majority of the people, having their hands full of
bags, boxes, bundles, and children, carried their tickets
in their teeth, and just at the head of the stairs stood a
young doctor in the Marine Hospital Service uniform,
who took them, looked at them, and stamped them
with the Ellis Island stamp. Considering the frauds
in connection with these tickets at Naples and on
board, the thoroughness used with them now was in-
deed futile.

THROUGH ELLIS ISLAND 217

Passing straight east from the head of the stairs, we
turned into the south half of the great registry floor,
which is divided, like the human body, into two great
parts nearly alike, so that one ship's load can be
handled on one side and another ship's load on the
other. In fact, as we came up, a quantity of people from
the north of Europe were being examined in the north
half.

Turning into a narrow railed-off lane, we encoun-
tered another doctor in uniform, who lifted hats or
pushed back shawls to look for favus heads, keenly
scrutinized the face and body for signs of disease or
deformity, and passed us on. An old man who limped
in front of me, he marked with a bit of chalk on the
coat lapel. At the end of the railed lane was a third
uniformed doctor, a towel hanging beside him, a small
instrument over which to turn up eyelids in his hand,
and back of him basins of disinfectants.

As we approached he was examining a Molise
woman and her two children. The youngest screamed
with fear when he endeavored to touch her, but with
a pat on the cheek and a kindly word the child was
quieted while he examined its eyes, looking for
trachoma or purulent ophthalmia. The second child
was so obstinate that it took some minutes to get it
examined, and then, having found suspicious con-
ditions, he marked the woman with a bit of chalk, and
a uniformed official led her and the little ones to the left
into the rooms for special medical examination. The old
man who limped went the same way, as well as many
others. Those who are found to be suffering from
trachoma are very frequently sent to the hospital on
the Island and are held and treated until " cured."
There is neither space nor excuse for discussing here

2i8 IMPORTED AMERICANS

the question of "curing" in a few days or weeks
cases of trachomatous conjunctivitis. The powers at
Washington have ruled that immigrants may be held
and cured, though there are surgeons at Ellis Island
who do not believe in it, and the best specialists in
New York contend that months or years are
necessary to eliminate any danger of contagion, while
the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary experiments
in Boston have convinced the doctors there that cures
are the exception.

Concetta Fomica was the only one of our party
whom the doctors examined more than once. Her
eyes were inflamed slightly, but she was passed. Just
where we turned to the right, a stern-looking woman
inspector, with the badge, stood looking at all the
women who came up to select any whose moral char-
acter might be questioned, and one of her procedures
was to ask each party as to the various relationships
of the men and women in it. Her Italian was good.

Passing west, we came to the waiting-rooms, in
which the groups which are entered on each sheet of
the manifest are held until K sheet or L sheet, whatever
their letter may be, is reached. Our party being so
large, and some of the declarations which are used to
fill out the items on the manifest having been made
at Messina, some at Reggio di Calabria, and some
at Naples, we were scattered through U, V, and W
groups.

We sank down on the wooden benches, thankful to
get seats once more. Our eyes pained severely for
some few minutes as a result of the turning up of the
lids, but the pain passed.

Somewhere about nine o'clock an official came by
and hurried out U group and passed it up into line

Stairway of Separation— Checking into Pens

THROUGH ELLIS ISLAND 219

along the railed way which led up to the inspector who
had U sheet, then came V group, and then W.
Knowing that the first into line would be the first
passed, and having the task of gathering our people
together out of the crowd as fast as they were
passed, my wife and I hurried to the end of the
lane and were among the first before the inspector.
Our papers were all straight, we were correctly
entered on the manifest, and had abundant money, had
been passed by the doctors, and were properly destined
to New York, and so were passed in less than one
minute. We were classed as "New York Outsides "
to distinguish us from the " New York Detained," who
await the arrival of friends to receive them; "Rail-
roads," who go to the stations for shipment; and "S.
I.'s," by which is meant those unfortunates who are
subjected to Special Inquiry in the semi-secret Special
Inquiry Court, which is the preliminary to being sent
back, though of course only a portion of " S. I.'s" are
sent back.

By the kindness of the official at the head of the
stairs by which we would ordinarily have passed
down and out to the ferry to take us to New York, we
were allowed to drop our baggage behind a post, and,
standing out of the way of the crowd, pick out our
people as they filtered through past the inspectors.
Salvatore Biajo came through marked " Railroad," and
was passed along to get his railroad-ticket order
stamped, his money exchanged at the stand kept be-
side the stairs under contract by Post & Flagg, bankers,
and in a minute more he had been moved on down
the stairs to the railroad room, after I had had but the
barest word with him. Antonio Genone, with a ticket
for Philadelphia, came through without going over to

220 IMPORTED AMERICANS

the right to the railroad-ticket stamping official, and he
was down the stairs and gone without even knowing
that he was separated from us permanently.

We began to see why the three stairways are called
"The Stairs of Separation." To their right is the
money exchange, to the left are the Special Inquiry
Room and the telegraph offices. Here family parties
with different destinations are separated without a
minute's warning, and often never see each other again.
It seems heartless, but it is the only practical system,
for if allowance was made for good-byes the examina-
tion and distribution process would be blocked then
and there by a dreadful crush. Special officers would
be necessary to tear relatives forcibly from each other's
arms. The stairs to the right lead to the railroad room,
where tickets are arranged, baggage checked and
cleared from customs, and the immigrants loaded on
boats to be taken to the various railroad stations for
shipment to different parts of the country. The cen-
tral stair leads to the detention rooms, where immigrants
are held pending the arrival of friends. The left
descent is for those free to go out to the ferry.

Our Socosa boys, despite their labor contracts, came
through bound for the railroad room, and they were
gone, waving their hands and throwing kisses to us.
Then the Gualtieri-Sicamino people, even Antonio,
who had completely lost control of the situation,
came through, marked "Detained." I was allowed
to collect them, that was all; as soon as they were
assembled they went down the middle stairs. As
soon as the women found they were to be shut up
behind the screens of steel, they began to bewail
their fortune, and between getting them quieted and
getting a proper understanding of just why it had

THROUGH ELLIS ISLAND 221

happened so, I had a lively five minutes. It seemed
certain that all but my wife and myself must go be-
hind the bars.

Having passed the last barrier and got all the infor-
mation I wanted on Ellis Island from the immigrants'
point of view, it seemed time to declare myself, and so
I informed the night chief inspector who I was and
why I was there, and requested that he discharge all
our people to me, so that I could take them over to
New York, as I wanted to get the story of their first
impressions on American soil by being with them
when they landed in the greatest American city. The
officials were highly amused and interested in the
whole affair, showed me every courtesy, and in five
minutes I was below at the gate of the detention room
with a written order for the entire party, except the
" Railroads," to be discharged to me; they were al-
ready gone.

I found our people just preparing to sit down at one
of the great number of tables to have one of the sub-
stantial meals which are served to immigrants; but
time was pressing, and so the boys got only a bite and
that by grabbing it and taking it with them. Antonio
was not to be found, and after a long search I ascer-
tained that he had convinced the obliging chief clerk
of the detention room that he could take care of him-
self in New York and had got himself discharged,
leaving the entire party behind. I caught up with
him before he got aboard the ferry-boat, and, as I
brought him back, got a glimpse into the waiting-room,
where friends of immigrants expected to arrive, or
witnesses called to testify before the Special Inquiry
Court wait until they are summoned and hear the
names of their friends read, after which they pass up

222 IMPORTED AMERICANS

to the court room above, or into the room to the west
on the same floor, where they have their friends re-
leased to them and take them away.

The more I saw of the inside of the great system on
the Island the more I was struck with its thoroughness
and the kindly, efficient manner in which the law was
enforced. If undesirable immigrants are pouring into
the United States through Ellis Island, it is not because
the laws are not strict enough, or the finest system
that human ingenuity can devise for handling large
masses is not brought into full play by honest and
conscientious officials, to pick out the bad from the
good. The whole trouble is that the undesirable im-
migrant comes up before the honest, intelligent official
with a lie so carefully prepared that the official is help-
less when he has nothing on which to rely but the tes-
timony of the immigrant and his friends. Only in the
home town can the truth be learned and the proper
discrimination made. Any other plan is fallacious.

At last we were reassembled. The women had
dried their tears. Under the inspiration of being at
last within the barrier, of being about to step on
American soil and untrammeled, the party seemed to
cast off its weariness, and we passed out of the huge
building, around to the ferry-boat, and aboard.

In the ferry house we saw a number of young Irish
girls who were under the care of a priest and were
being taken to the Mission of Our Lady of the Rosary,
an institution that looks after immigrant girls who
come over to be servants. Large numbers of the peo-
ple who had been with us on the Prin^essin Irene also
appeared, tagged with a yellow ticket, and under the
leadership of an official from the Society for the Pro-
tection of Italian immigrants. As we went aboard,

Excluded for Age — Waiting for Immigrant Friends

THROUGH ELLIS ISLAND 223

this official, with one or two helpers, stood by the
doorway to one of the side compartments, and when
one of his people appeared he seized the immigrant
and thrust him quickly into the cabin, thus getting the
crowd together. Then noses were counted and all
were found to be present. There are numbers of mis-
sionaries and protection societies, all very necessary for
the shielding of greenhorns from the sharks that lie in
wait for them about the Battery. Formerly immigrant
girls were kidnapped by scores, and literally kept pris-
oners in evil resorts; and men were taken into quarters
of the city where it was easy to rob them of all they
possessed, and they could not even tell the police
where it happened.

When Antonio's eldest brother arrived in New York,
he was discharged to a friend of Antonio, who accom-
panied him safely ashore, and, having other things
demanding his attention, thought it wise to put
Giuseppe into a carriage and send him to the Grand
Central Station. They bargained with a cabman stand-
ing at South Ferry to take Giuseppe and his baggage
for $1.50, and Giuseppe got in. As soon as the cab
was out of sight of the Battery and of the friend who
had met him, Giuseppe was astounded by the cab-
man's stopping and demanding a dollar more before
he would drive on. After a futile argument in sign
talk, and with a great waste of language which neither
understood, Giuseppe succumbed and paid the dollar.
In ten minutes more the cabman stopped and demanded
another two dollars. Ten minutes later he had that
also. Just about the time he knew he must be close
to the station, Giuseppe received another demand, this
time of three dollars. He did not have it, and after a
violent scene with the cabman, who threatened to beat

224 IMPORTED AMERICANS

him with the butt of his whip, Giuseppe burst into
tears, overcome with the feeling of being alone in a
strange land and the helpless victim of such a villain.
He decided to climb out and try to find his way to the
station, so he shouldered his baggage and trudged off
to the north, for he knew the station lay that way.
The cabman whipped up and disappeared. Finally,
after asking scores of people where the station
was, and being laughed at by some and pitied by
others, he met a little girl who understood Italian, and
she pointed out the way. He was only two blocks
distant.

There had been no one to meet Giuseppe Rota, and
he would have been held in the Island until his rela-
tives could be communicated with. He nearly wept
at the prospect of being alone, and so I brought him
with us. He was afraid to go five feet away from me
on the ferry-boat.

As we docked at the Barge Office we had a slight
wait until the returning officials, visitors, and better-
class passengers on the deck overhead could be let off,
and then we were released. We passed through the
huge piles of immigrants' baggage, to which we must
return on the morrow to get the heavy pieces of our
own, and out to the street.

There was the stretch of Battery Park, the looming
buildings about Bowling Green and on State Street, a
real Broadway car, and a fine L train roaring north on
Sixth Avenue tracks, boys with ten-o'clock extras, and
a thousand things that told us we were back home,
once again in the best place of all. I was at the head
of the party leading the way to a Broadway car, for it
was useless to try to go up on the " L" with all our
encumbrances, and looked back at my wife. She was

THROUGH ELLIS ISLAND 225

looking up at the trees and the buildings, and she said
gently, " Thank God! Thank God!"

The car we took was entirely empty but for our-
selves, and when we were inside with our luggage it
looked like a baggage car. Weary as our people were,
their eyes were wide with wonder at all they saw, and
as we swung around into Broadway and started up
town 1 saw in Concetta's eyes that wild look of the
"startled fawn " as she contemplated the great canon,
flanked by buildings, into which we were rushing.
She shrank from each sudden accentuation of the noise
of the street.

People began to get on the car. They stared at us
and made audible comments, little thinking that some
of us understood.

"Oh, what dirty, dirty wretches," said a woman,
with a worn seal-plush sacque, as she looked at our
women.

" I don't see why they let these lousy dagoes ride on
the same cars other people have to use," observed a
stout gentleman with gold-framed glasses as he shrank
back from Gaetano Mullura, who had tried to change
his seat and was plunging down the aisle owing to a
sudden jerk of the car.

Ere long we came to Bleecker Street, and, knowing
there were several hotels in the vicinity below middle
class, the only sort at which we stood a chance of
being admitted, we alighted, and I went in to the desk
to see if I could get a half-dozen rooms. Three times
I was met with the excuse, " We are all full," though
I could plainly see that the room board was but half
covered with slips. At each of the hotels we created
a stir. As I turned away from the last desk the clerk
observed to the cashier:

226 IMPORTED AMERICANS

" Well, what do you think of that for nerve ?"

' ' What 's that ? " said the cashier, who had been busy.

"Why, that dago coming in here with a push like
that, trying to get rooms."

Beginning to get a little exasperated, I led the way
west into the Italian quarter, and we successively tried
the Italian hotels, — Hotel di Campidoglio, Hotel di
France, and one other. All refused us admittance.
By this time there was not a member of the party who
was not exhausted, so, gathering them together in the
shelter of a building in the course of construction, and
leaving my wife in charge, Antonio and I went hunting
a roof for the heads of all of us. It was an hour later
when we mounted the steps at the same house in
which my wife and I had lived. It seemed ages since
we had left the portal, but the good Signora Tonella
was there, looking just the same, and when she found
out who it was under the dirt and the Italian clothes
she offered the three small rooms she had, and, having
no other chance, we accepted. Going back to the
Hotel di Campidoglio, I persuaded the proprietor to
allow us to go into the rear of the dining-room and
get something to eat. It took the sight of money to
induce him. The waiter was angry at being requested
to serve us, and slammed plates and things on the
table. A little silver acted as a sedative to his nerves.

Poor little Ina went to sleep with a spoon in her
mouth, and every person at the two large tables was
exhausted, it was plain to see. But, with full stom-
achs once more, we took up the last stage of the
journey, and, shouldering our baggage, made our way
the several blocks to 147 West Houston Street.

Not one of the three rooms had a full-sized bed in it,
and but one had space enough to spread a bed on the

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THROUGH ELLIS ISLAND 227

floor, yet after a distressing half hour I got the fifteen
persons still with us parceled out into the three rooms,
all except Giuseppe Rota, who was number sixteen.
Try as I would, I was unable to find room for him to
stretch his hulking frame unless he took to the door-
steps, so I escorted him over to the Branch of the So-
ciety for the Protection of Italian Immigrants, a few
doors west, and put him up there. When he found he
was to be left alone, he burst out crying and declared
he would never see his uncle in Newark again. I reas-
sured him, and told him I would come and get him on
the morrow. I remember leaving the place, and it is a
fact I was so worn that, going back to the house, set-
tling the others for the night, and turning in myself,
left no impression on my memory, and I cannot say
what happened.

We slept until after noon the next day, and then
began the process of assembling all the baggage, clear-
ing it from the customs, and of dispersing the remnant
of our party to their various destinations.

Explanation of the illustration entitled, " The Immigrants'
Track Through Ellis Island" facing this page :

A. Immigrants landed from barges enter by these stairs.

B. Surgeon examines health tickets.

C. Surgeon examines head and body.

D. Surgeon examines eyes. Suspects go to left for further exami-

nation.

E. Female inspector looking for prostitutes.

F. Group enters and sits in pen corresponding to ticket letter or

number.

G. Inspector examines on twenty-two questions.
H. Into special inquiry court.

I. Stamping railroad ticket orders.

J. Money exchange and telegraph office.

K. To railroad pen.

L. To New York pen.

M. To the ferry and New York.

N. Telegraph office.

CHAPTER XIX

THE DISPERSION

WHEN I went to get Giuseppe Rota, I found
the officials at the immigrant home were
very loath to let him go. He was seated at
one of the long tables of the big barracks-like house,
with forty other men, women, and children, and was
enjoying a hearty meal, notwithstanding his anxiety as
to his ultimate fate. Since he had got into their hands
the management was chary of relinquishing him tome,
even though I had committed him, and poor Giuseppe
protested volubly that I had been more than a father to
him, and that his only hope of reaching his uncle was
through me. After a tiresome explanation I signed a
receipt for him and gave references for myself, which
were promptly looked up, and then we were allowed
to depart.

The next task was to find Ferruchio Vazzana, a
Gualtieri man who at that time had a small store on
East Fifteenth Street near Second Avenue, and to whom
Nunzio Giunta was "raccomended"; then Tommaso
Figaro, a painter from Gualtieri, who would be spon-
sor for Nicola Curro. His address was 520 East Four-
teenth Street. Nicola and Nunzio went with Antonio
and me, and we had barely entered the Italian district
of that part of the city when two or three men from
different directions came flying toward us, throwing
their arms about Nunzio, Nicola, and Antonio. They
were all Gualtieri people, and in a few minutes I found

THE DISPERSION 229

myself outside of an excited throng centred about the
newcomers and talking at a rate that left me entirely in
the dark as to what was being said. When they did
remember me, the boys found great difficulty in ex-
plaining how I, an " American proper," came to be so
closely associated with them, and I noticed a marked
cooling of the enthusiasm among the people about.
They were extremely suspicious of me.

In the crowd were two brothers of Tommaso Figaro,
and they led the way to his little two-roomed home,
for the first of a series of visits about the tenements of
the neighborhood, among old friends from the village,
which I was compelled to terminate at last by drag-
ging Antonio away and starting for Ellis Island to look
after the baggage. Nicola and Nunzio were left in the
midst of their friends, who were chaffing them, calling
them "greenhorns," and poking fun at their "old-
country" clothes. We met other lately arrived immi-
grants, some who had been with us on the Prin^essin
Irene, and pressure was being brought on them to get
them to lay aside the attire which marked them as new
arrivals. A month later Nunzio and Nicola did not
look like the same men.

When we arrived at the Barge Office, Mike Delaney,
the veteran Battery policeman, who has handled mil-
lions of immigrants, was lining up the aspettati to
go on board the boat which was substituting for the
old John G. Carlisle, she having broken down at last,
and we found ourselves jammed among hundreds. It
happened that the morning newspapers had had arti-
cles concerning the arrival of our party, and wherever
we went the word was passed among the immigration
officials that Antonio and I were the leaders of the
group.

230 IMPORTED AMERICANS

We found that a part of the baggage had already
been sent to the pier of the Stonington Line, but some
of the trunks had heavy customs charges against them,
and the owners, Concetta, Nastasia, and Pulejo must
sign the papers in Boston. We contrived to get
through in time to catch the second boat back, and
only emerged at all from the tangle of checking, ex-
pressing, and receipting at the Barge Office by the
kindly aid of the officials there. I found myself won-
dering how the immigrants who persist in bringing
such confused quantities of baggage ever get it to its
destination at all, and was thankful that our troubles
with our impedimenta were about over. Vain was my
fancy, for there are tracers out for some of it yet.

On the returning boat I had an interesting talk with
a Russian Jew by the name of Mottet lanjge, who had
just arrived. He came from near Odessa and had been
met by his brother, a hatmaker employed by a Wa-
verley Place firm, who acted as interpreter for us.

Mottet had just finished his term of enforced service
in the Russian army, and had more than once been com-
pelled to act in procedures against his own people,
whom he said were driven about from pillar to post
by the Russian authorities in a way that made Amer-
ica seem like a heaven to them; and when letters came
from their relatives here, telling them of how free and
easy life was, they were wild to escape from their sur-
roundings, and many more would have followed his
example but for the fact that officially circulated reports
hinted of strange dangers and hardships which the im-
migrants must undergo. Before he entered the army
he had been working for a farmer who paid him about
$2.503 week. The farmers through all that part of
the country owned their own land, and their farms av-

Mr. Broughton Brandenburg, as He Looked when He
Passed through Ellis Island as an Immigrant

THE DISPERSION 231

eraged in size from forty to fifty acres. Mortgages on
these farms were increasing in number, and many of
them were held by wealthy Jews in the towns. In the
army Mottet averred his pay was forty-five cents per
month, and his treatment was of the roughest sort.
He was in fine physical condition, though, and looked
forward to his work in this country with great eager-
ness.

He pointed out to me a man, twenty years older than
himself, heavily bearded, wearing the odd Russian cap,
and with boots to his knees, whom he said had
been cruelly treated by the Christians in his village,
and had lost all his property through fire, as well as his
wife and daughter. His only son was a conscript,
and his father did not even know where he was, so he
had borrowed enough money to come to America to
begin life over again at the commencement of his old
age.

By using great haste we got the party assembled
and down to the Stonington Line pier in time to catch
the night boat. I had intended to go with the Squad-
ritos to Stonington, to see them entirely through to
their destination, but an unforeseen obstacle arose in
the form of Giuseppe Rota. Because he refused to be
left alone to look after himself, I had been lugging him
about all the latter end of the afternoon, and when we
made our way down to the boat it suddenly occurred
to me that if I went to Stonington I must either take
him along, leave him standing in the darkness on the
pier, or find some one to take care of him. It seemed
easy enough to call a messenger boy, but when the uni-
formed mite arrived and I committed Giuseppe to his care
to be taken back to 147 West Houston Street, Giuseppe
raised his voice to heaven and bellowed like a bull,

232 IMPORTED AMERICANS

clinging about my shoulders and protesting that he
was afraid I was sending him away to lose him, so
that he might never see his uncle or any of his compad-
res from Avellino again, and if I did he vowed he
would end all his suspense and suffering by plunging
off into the dark river then and there, so I dismissed the
messenger and took the party aboard, bade them good-
bye for a short time, and took Giuseppe home again.

The group was quartered in the steerage compart-
ments forward, which are often filled with two or
three hundred immigrants, and inasmuch as they
knew they would arrive in Stonington about two
o'clock the next morning, they refused to try to get
any sleep, but sat about talking and singing while the
boat ploughed up the Sound. Ina, however, went to
sleep in her mother's arms, and her mother alternately
laughed and cried, and hugged and kissed the sleeping
child as she thought of the diminishing hours that
separated her from her husband.

There were many other Italians aboard, all bound to
the New England manufacturing towns, and they
made merry on the way, and related the wonders
which they had seen so far in the great new country.

At last the big whistle sounded in a long blast, and
the boat slowed down. Soon she was bumping
against the pier, and an officer was routing out the im-
migrants and getting them ashore.

Antonio and Giovanni Pulejo were the first on deck,
and as they appeared at the end of the plank a wild
shout went up from a black group in the shadow, and
they heard the familiar voices of Giuseppe, Tommaso,
and Carlino calling their names through the darkness.

Soon all were ashore and mingling in a wild scene
of embracing and kissing, men and women, men and

THE DISPERSION 233

men, women and women. When Camela had Giu-
seppe's arms about her at last, all she could do was to
lay her tired head on his shoulder and weep, while Ina
stood at one side gazing with wonder on the strange,
handsome man who was her father. She was having
her first sight of him that she could remember, and
preferred to take as good a survey as she could get in
the dim light, from a point outside of the zone of em-
braces. When she had a chance she said to Concetta,

" I thought he was three times bigger than that, but
he is nice."

At last the party formed a procession, with Antonio
and his happy wife in the lead, and marched up from
the dock to the substantial old house on Water Street,
on the first floor of which, fronting on the street, An-
tonio had his barber shop. He found that during his
absence his brothers had had a disagreement about
affairs in the shop, and Carlino had gone off to work
for another barber. Carlino's welcome, while warm
enough, had a certain bitter tang in it which was the
result of his acquired disdain of anything Italian, and
his lack of sympathy for the things at home which
made up the principal subject of interest in the family
party just then. He has pronounced himself as ail-
American, and says he will never go back to Italy, no
matter what happens, not even for a visit.

It was some hours yet before the final separation of
the last of the family party when Concetta, Nastasia,
Giovanni, and Felicia Pulejo, arid Gaetano Mullura
should take the train for Boston, and it was passed in
excited chatter concerning all that had occurred since
they had last met.

Shortly after daybreak the Boston party, weary be-
yond expression, got aboard the coaches provided for

234 IMPORTED AMERICANS

immigrants at the dock, and were whirled away. I
had telegraphed Stefano Smedele and the other Har-
rison Street friends what hour they would arrive, and
there was another joyful reception at South Station,
and another trip through a bewildering confusing city
to the Italian quarter, where the last group of the
party was subdivided.

Concetta is now living in the home of her uncle, and
six months have served to make a great change in her.
She has a new spirit, a new gayety and independence,
and at my last news from her there are about twenty
young Italians in and about Harrison Street who are
madly in love with her, and from all I hear it will not
be long before she makes a choice and has a home of
her own. The chances are in favor of a fine young
fellow who is employed in one of the factories as a
machine hand.

Giovanni Pulejo is working as a barber in one of the
South Boston shops, and Felicia is in one of the great
shoe-factories at Lynn, Massachusetts. He says he
finds the enormous machine process there very
different from the handwork at the little benches in
front of Merlino Carmelo's shop back in Gualtieri.

Nastasia is helping his uncle, and is going to have a
better education than he has. All have melted into
the life of the Italian colony in Boston with an ease
and an adaptability that are truly remarkable, and now
that they have learned enough English to understand
what is said to them and to make some answer, they
are beginning to enjoy life. The younger people
suffered severely from the unaccustomed cold of the
winter, but all have survived it, and I really think
Concetta and Nastasia are the better for it.

When Giuseppe Rota and I left the Stonington pier,

Stonington — The Barber-shop — The Squadrito House

THE DISPERSION 235

he was in a wretched state because he realized that he
had kept me from carrying out my plans, but I reas-
sured him, and when we reached home my wife and I
took him out to the best restaurant to which we could
presume to go in our poor attire, and gave him what
he said was the best dinner he had ever eaten. The
pleasure which the poor peasant lad took in all that he
saw and heard about him is only partly expressed in
a sentence from a letter which he sent back to the
folks at home in Avellino and came, round about, back
to me:

"The signer and signora were to me as are my
brothers and sisters; ... the place was a palace
such as that of the duke; . . . the American
people are strange in not liking to be treated with the
honorable respect that should come from common
folks."

The next morning he shouldered his little blue striped
bag, and we started for the Jersey City station of the
Pennsylvania Railroad. On the way we encountered
three men in a group, whom I knew with the intimacy
of long association. None of the three recognized
me, and passed with amused scrutiny. I called one of
them by name, and he took to the gutter as if thinking
he was about to be held up. Then came recognition,
and I introduced Giuseppe. Suffice it to say that we
missed the train we had intended to take.

Being greatly pressed for time, I endeavored to per-
suade Giuseppe to go alone on the next train to New-
ark, and in the station even found a Newark man who
kindly volunteered to pilot him to his uncle's house;
but once again he flung his arms about me, and, to
quiet him, I bought another ticket and went along.

As we got off the car in Newark and turned into the

236 IMPORTED AMERICANS

Italian district, the strains of bands fell on our ears, and
soon we saw decorated arches spanning the streets,
crowds of people in holiday dress thronging the way,
and later a procession came by in which scores of little
girls, marching in white, preceded a half-dozen strong
men bearing a platform on which was a saint's figure.
The people were celebrating the feast day of the patron
saint of Avellino, and the figure was covered with
purses, medals, watches, etc., while heaped-up gifts
lay at its feet.

As we neared the crowd some Avellino youngster
saw us and ran ahead shrieking that Giuseppe had
come. Again there was a half-hour's wild embracing,
laughing, and questioning, in which I found myself
entirely forgotten for the time being, and when atten-
tion was turned my way it was of a very suspicious
sort. Giuseppe told his relatives when we reached
their house (back rooms in a ramshackle old frame
affair) of the several things we had done in endeavor-
ing to help him, and everything he related made the
people about more suspicious. All became silent but
Giuseppe. I felt constrained to go, feeling most un-
welcome and somewhat resenting the unaccountable
attitude of Giuseppe's friends.

As I shook hands with him, he drew forth some
small money which had been given him by some one
in the crowd, and offered to recompense me in part,
and said that when his uncle returned he would send
me the whole of what I had expended for him. He
had already given me back the seventy lire. When I
told him plainly, and made it emphatic, that what
slight kindness I may have had the opportunity of
showing him was not for any purpose of gain, and
definitely refused the money, the people about under-

THE DISPERSION 237

went a strange metamorphosis: they hugged me and
patted me on the back, two darted across the street for
schooners of beer, a woman brought sweet cakes, a
brand new willow rocking-chair was brought from
another room for me to sit in, and for the remaining
brief time I had to spend with them I was treated roy-
ally. Giuseppe's cousin led in a joint apology for their
coldness and concluded by saying, —

" You know American mans ain't good to Eyetal-
yuns on'y he make de graft."

When 1 got back to Houston Street there was a tele-
gram from Philadelphia saying that Genone and the
four Socosa boys had arrived safely and would go to
work the next day, the four youths going out to the
mines, and Genone into a chair factory until he could
find employment at his trade of cheese-making. So I
knew the party was all safely distributed, and my wife
and I began the process of returning to our former
state of life. It is strange, but true, that it took us a
full week to change social station. At first glance
there would seem to be no bar in doing it in a few
hours. When my wife and I had gone with a part of
our party to my office on the day of our arrival, not
a person in the place recognized us, and a half-hour
later the editor of Leslie's Magazine stood talking with
Antonio Squadrito for some minutes, with my wife
and I standing beside him, without recognizing us, so
it is no wonder that when I went to the storage ware-
house to get our effects the clerk refused to believe I
was the man to whom the receipt I held had been is-
sued. Agents and janitors refused to show us apart-
ments in the garb we were in, and our clothes were in
our stored trunks, so it is easy to see why it was a
week before we got away from Houston Street.

CHAPTER XX

THE STRUGGLES OF THE GUALTIERI BOYS IN
NEW YORK

FEW immigrants come to America these days
who have not some relative already here, who
has prepared some sort of foothold for them,
and all have friends who will look out for their inter-
ests to a certain extent. This explains nicely the mys-
tery of why immigrants will mass in the four States of
the East which lie nearest New York, when the South
is offering inducements for Italian and Austrian labor,
and the West never has enough farm hands. I am in
receipt of letters from large landholders in several parts
of the West who want immigrants to come and settle
on their lands, and do not understand why, no matter
how much publicity is given to the advantages in the
West, the immigrants persist in clinging to the East.
The reason is that they wish to stay where their
friends and relatives are, and their friends and relatives
are already situated in the industrial centres of the East,
where they in their turn had been detained by the first
comers.

The two Gualtieri boys came "raccomended" to
Ferruchio Vazzana and Tommaso Figaro, neither of
them relatives, but merely friends, and both with
enough to do in looking after their own family circles'
interests, so that the two were thrown very largely on
their own resources; and their adventures in New
York, on which I have kept a very careful eye without

THE GUALTIERI BOYS 239

too much interference, form a very typical story of
what befalls the "greenhorn."

Both had a small amount of money, and, if neces-
sary, Nunzio could have sent home for more, but his
pride forbade. With Nicola it was different; the entire
family fortunes depended on this venture, though I
did not know it for some months: the bit of property
his father owns is worth about $300, and represents the
toil of a lifetime. This had been mortgaged for $60 at
twenty per cent for six months, in order that Nicola
might come to America. His wages as a cabinet-
maker and finished carpenter in the village had been a
most important factor in the family support. The
family consists of his father and mother, his wife a
girl not yet eighteen, and their year-old baby. To
make up for the lack of this, the three adults all en-
gaged in work of some sort until the time when Nicola
could begin to send home the splendid earnings to
which he looked forward in America.

He had received a good education in the academic
and technical schools of Messina, and in addition to
being a first-class cabinet-maker is an excellent trom-
bonist. He had served his term in the Guardia di
Finanza, and had at one time been awarded a prize of
100 lire for bravery and efficiency in trapping some
west-coast smugglers.

With Nunzio the case was different. Though big
and strong, he had no technical training whatever, the
five years of his life which he had spent in the Carabi-
neers precluding all opportunities for that. He could
be only an unskilled laborer.

The first thing to do was to find them living quarters,
and this was done by their friends. Nicola got a room
which he shared with four other men, and his board

240 IMPORTED AMERICANS

and washing, for $3.20 per week, and Nunzio got a
tiny single room, in another house, with board, for
$3.50 per week. A part of Nicola's slender store went
at once to buy him a cheap overcoat.

The very next day after being settled, they began the
hunt for work, accompanied by Tommaso or Ferruchio.
Wherever Nunzio went, bosses, superintendents, man-
agers looked at his massive frame and seemed inclined
to hire him until they found he could speak no English,
and then they turned away, saying they had no time
to bother in teaching him how to take orders. All of
the contractors for gangs of Italians seemed to have all
the men they wished, and as day after day went by,
tramping the city, going to as many as forty places in
one afternoon, and meeting with a refusal everywhere,
Nunzio began to get very discouraged, and Ferruchio
to protest that he could not afford the time from his
own business to go about and interpret, and Nunzio
tried to go alone one morning. It was late in the
afternoon before he even found his way back home,
and he was very badly frightened. In a little while his
money was entirely gone, and he was on the verge of
despair.

When things were the blackest, he heard that a
number of Italians were being employed to clean out
a big store in some place where the " L " trains ran by,
and reported it to Ferruchio, who followed up this
slender clew and found that Siegel & Cooper were tak-
ing on all Italians for their night porter's staff, as they
found them much better workmen than the mixed
Germans, Irish, and negroes they had had. In brief,
Nunzio secured a place in the big department store,
going to work at seven in the evening and working
until seven in the morning for $7.50 per week, and

THE GUALTIERI BOYS 241

good pay for overtime. He had Italians all about
him, and the work, though heavy, was not unbear-
able. I photographed him and his associates one
night, and the pictures tell the story very well. The
great disadvantage was that he could not hear any
English spoken, and at the end of six weeks in this
country could say nothing but "Good-morning" and
a few bits of profanity. Meanwhile he was sleeping
all day, working all night, and saving every cent he
earned. His hands were growing calloused in the
spots that had been sore the first few days, and he was
much happier than he had been at any time. But mis-
fortune came. He was detailed to work with a Cala-
brese who had charge of the day work in the room
where the store's waste paper is baled. There was $17
profit for the company on the saving and selling of
each day's waste paper. The Calabrese spoke English
and took the orders from the superintendent, translat-
ing them to Nunzio and another " greenhorn." Shortly
after Nunzio had been promoted to day work and his
pay raised a dollar, a cousin of the Calabrese arrived in
New York, and the Calabrese wanted Nunzio's place
for the cousin, so he began systematically to undermine
Nunzio. If the superintendent ordered one thing, the
Calabrese told Nunzio it was another, and when the
superintendent kicked because the work was improp-
erly done, the Calabrese laid the blame on Nunzio. At
last one night the superintendent asked all hands to
work a part of the night, and the Calabrese informed
him that Nunzio refused to do so, something which
Nunzio had not the slightest idea of doing, and in ten
more seconds Nunzio found himself being suddenly
and inexplicably ushered outside.
Of course it was not difficult to reinstate him in a

242 IMPORTED AMERICANS

day or two, but after the holiday rush was over scores
of people were discharged, and Nunzio went among
the rest. Once again he began the task of finding a
place, and tramped the streets in the bitter cold, going
about asking every place where there was work going
on, "You wan-sa man?" — and when it was found
that that was about all the English he knew, the boss
would always shake his head. For weeks he lived on
the money which he had saved while working in the
department store, and then one day he accosted Mr.
Tolman, the superintendent in McCall's Ba^ar estab-
lishment in Thirty-First Street, and, as it happened that
a man was needed that very minute to handle the huge
piles of printed matter in the shop, Nunzio was put to
work at $1.25 per day. I saw him the evening of the
second day, and he was unable to sit up straight from
soreness caused by the heavy lifting and carrying he
had to do, but he clung desperately to his employment,
and now his reward has come. All about him are
English-speaking people with the exception of a large
group of Austrians, and so he is picking up the lan-
guage rapidly, and he has been promoted to the run-
ning of one of the big machines in the plant and is
averaging $10 a week. His face shines with his pros-
perity and he wants to get married.

There were many opportunities for work for a
skilled cabinet-maker in October and November, but
there were three huge obstacles in the way of Nicola's
embracing one of the many, — lack of English, lack of
tools, lack of a union card.

The matter of the tools was not insurmountable, but
the others seemed to be. After a week's hunt for
work in some small shop where he could have tools
supplied him and a union card was not required, he

a
o
o
U

bfl C
•

ya

rt

bfl

THE GUALTIERI BOYS 243

seized a chance to go to work for the United States
Biscuit Company, hustling boxes of biscuits, etc., and
for his work received pay at the rate of $4 a week,
which he calculated would pay his expenses while he
was waiting an opportunity to engage in his trade.
Four days of this work saw him exhausted physically,
his hand mashed, and his wrist strained so that he was
unfit for work of any kind. Before he was well again
he was in debt so deeply that he was nearly distracted.
Just at the time when his family was expecting he
should be sending home some fine sums of money, he
was unable to make even his own living, through lack
not of capability but of opportunity.

He got two or three days' work for an Italian car-
penter who was doing some roof-repairing, and the
$4 he made paid one week's expenses at least; then
he was commissioned to make a cabinet for filing
papers, and Tommaso arranged with an Irish carpenter
named Delaney, who had a shop at 147 West Thirtieth
Street, for Nicola to work there while making the
cabinet, paying Delaney a dollar a day for the use of
tools and shop. There was no fire in the shop during
Christmas week, and Nicola caught a heavy cold.
New Year fell on Friday, and there was no work of
course. He spent the day resting and doctoring him-
self. Saturday morning a terrible blizzard was blow-
ing, and he walked through it from the East Side to
the shop, arriving at seven o'clock, but no one had ap-
peared to unlock the place. If he could have spoken
English he could have inquired where to find Delaney
or where to telephone him, but all he could do was to
wait or go home, so he waited there on the step in the
driving storm until one o'clock that afternoon, when
he appeared at my house hardly in his senses, nearly

244 IMPORTED AMERICANS

dead from exposure and on the verge of pneumonia.
Only by his friends taking extreme care of him was he
able to go back in a few days and finish his work.
During this time Tommaso Figaro, acting on my advice,
went with Nicola to both the Carpenters' and Cabinet-
makers' locals, and endeavored to get him admitted to
the unions. At first the difficulty seemed to be that
there was no union man to sign Nicola's application,
but this was obviated. Why the matter was delayed
thereafter I do not know. Two excellent opportuni-
ties for employment at the union rate of $18.503 week
were offered to Nicola in the last week of January, but
he could not begin work until he got his union card.
He did not get it then, nor has he even got it yet.

On the ist of March he must send home the money
to lift the debt on his father's property, or the family's
little all would go. He was not yet caught up with his
own debts in this country, and so he abandoned all
hope for the time being of trying to get employment
at his trade, and began to look for employment as an
unskilled laborer. At the end of a black week he
found this in Charles Schweinler's printing establish-
ment in the Lexington Building on East Twenty-fifth
Street, and at this writing he is still laboring there,
carrying bundles of paper from press to table and such
tasks. He is receiving about $8 a week, adding in
his pay for extra time. When the ist of March came
he had just $7 instead of the needed $60, and when
every ray of hope seemed gone and he was nearly wild
with worry a way was opened and the debt was paid.

So far both boys have been so intent on their own
struggles and their own work that neither has given
much thought to the country in which he now lives,
and less to the rights as a citizen which he may come

THE GUALTIERI BOYS 245

to enjoy legally in five years, or illegally at any time he
wishes by purchasing fraudulent naturalization papers.

The night we landed in New York from Ellis Island
there were signs everywhere of the bitter battle be-
tween Low and McClellan and their respective sup-
porters. I explained it all carefully to our people, and
they were greatly interested, for they thoroughly under-
stood the electoral form of government, as communal
and legislative officials are elected by popular vote in
Italy. Two days later Nunzio told me that an Italian
friend of his had asked him if he did not want to make a
couple of dollars voting at the election two weeks
hence.

"Why, I cannot vote; I have not been here long
enough," said Nunzio.

" Huh, you are a greenhorn. I have only been here
two years, and I have voted twice and belong to a
political club. You come around to the club with me,
and I will introduce you to a man who will give you
naturalization papers. We will register you, and you
will never need think of it after that. You will be just
as much of a citizen as any of us."

When I explained to the boys how illegal this pro-
cedure would have been, Nunzio said:

"Well, if that is the sort of thing being a citizen is,
I don't believe I want to be one."

CHAPTER XXI

LEGISLATION AND EVASION

IT is exasperating to any patriotic American to have
brought convincingly before him the proofs of a
wholesale evasion of a very carefully planned code
of laws which he fain would think is a sufficient pro-
tection of his civic rights and his country's best inter-
ests. It is more annoying to realize that the successful
evaders are for the most part foreigners, and those,
too, of commonly despised races.

The severity of our laws in the matter of counter-
feiting is well known, but they have no terrors what-
soever for the gangs of Italian counterfeiters who are
giving the Secret Service Department more trouble
than it has ever had with native criminals of this
order.

The internal revenue laws are very thorough, and
the execution of them is far-reaching and systematic,
in fact the administration of the federal internal revenue
system has long been a boast with this country, and so
well did it do its work that now and then a lone
moonshiner escaped detection, and that was all. Since
the influx of foreign masses into the country, the
troubles of the Department have grown. In the larger
cities to-day the Bohemian cigar makers and dealers are
building up intricate systems of cigar making and sell-
ing without paying the government its due. Buying
direct from farmers and planters, failing to account for
the stock bought, making without recording the prod-

LEGISLATION AND EVASION 247

uct, selling it clandestinely to refill boxes, — those are
some of the details of the operations. The extent of
the frauds is growing every day, just as rapidly as the
number of aliens who will engage in such practices in-
creases.

Of the naturalization frauds much has been written
and said, and I have given a number of instances in
earlier chapters which show how the Italians particu-
larly operate with fraudulent naturalization papers, not
only using them to vote with in this country, and so
reap the harvest of political heelers, — meanwhile having
any true idea of citizenship they might get hopelessly
abased, — but farming them out to serve as cloaks for
passing in as citizens several of their countrymen each
year. The worst feature of this is that politically un-
scrupulous men in all of the large cities of the country
do not hesitate to use their influence to obtain fraud-
ulent naturalization papers for their alien followers,
in fact employ the papers to buy the friendship of the
aliens or to reward services already rendered. There
are election districts in the Italian quarter of New
York where not more than onehalf of the registered
foreign-born voters are legally entitled to ballot.

The remedy for this feature of alien legislation and
evasion is to change, by Federal act, the system of ex-
amining aliens, and, without making it more difficult
for a man to become naturalized rightfully, make the
research into his record and attainments so far-reach-
ing that even perjury will not save him; for perjury,
as a crime, rests lightly on the average alien's con-
science.

The evasions of the contract-labor law and of the
exclusion-of-diseased-immigrants law have been many
times mentioned in these pages, and constitute a

248 IMPORTED AMERICANS

problem which will not be solved by any legislation
making the examination at our ports any more strict.
Smuggling across the border from Canada and
Mexico continues to be a favorite method of evasion
of the laws. A general statement of the situation is
made in the following extract from the Report for
1903 of Commissioner-General of Immigration, F. P.
Sargent, which includes extracts from the last Report
of Commissioner for Canada, Robert Watchorn, on
the year's work done at Canadian ports and on the
border. It should prove a revelation to those who be-
lieve our present system of controlling immigration is
a success.

This statement, covering the past seven fiscal years,
will serve to show the steady increase in alien immi-
gration to the United States through the ports of
Canada:

July i, 1896, to June 30, 1897 10,646

July I, 1897, to June 30, 1898 IO»737

July I, 1898, to June 30, 1899 13>%S3

July i, 1899, to June 30, 1900 23,200

July i, 1900, to June 30, 1901 25,220

July i, 1901, to June 30, 1902 29,199

July i, 1902, to June 30, 1903 3S.92O

The foregoing figures, it should be remembered, re-
fer to those only who are manifested on the lists fur-
nished by transportation lines whose North American
terminals are at Canadian seaports as destined to the
United States. They do not include those aliens who
subsequent to landing in the Dominion enter this
country as residents of Canada. The number of such
is doubtless considerable, but the Bureau has no data
at its command to enable it to make even an approx-
imately accurate computation thereof. The inspection
of those referred to in the foregoing statement is made

LEGISLATION AND EVASION 249

at the Canadian port of arrival in the same manner
that aliens arriving at seaports of this country are ex-
amined.

As to the operations of administrative officers in re-
spect to those who seek admission after temporary
residence in the Dominion the subjoined report of the
United States commissioner of immigration at Mon-
treal gives information that cannot fail to impress one
with the magnitude and importance of the duties dis-
charged under his supervision, as well as with the
efficiency with which those duties are performed.

FROM COMMISSIONER WATCHORN'S REPORT.

233 ST. ANTOINE STREET,
Montreal, Canada.

SIR: I have the honor to report for the fiscal year
concerning immigration from Europe to the United
States through Canada.

Pursuant to the requirements of section 10 of De-
partment Circular 97, dated November i, 1901, monthly
reports have been made to the Bureau on the prescribed
forms; you are therefore already fully advised as to the
numbers of aliens examined, admitted, or rejected, as
the case may be. This report is intended to amplify
the information furnished per regular forms.

One year ago I had occasion to report that an act of
Parliament had been passed at Ottawa, to wit, Bill 1 12,
passed by House of Commons May, 1902, designed to
prevent "the landing at Canadian ports of any immi-
grant or other passenger who is suffering from a loath-
some, dangerous, infectious disease or malady, whether
such immigrant intends to settle in Canada, or only in-
tends to pass through Canada to settle in some other
country."

Although this act was passed in May, 1902, it was
not made effective till September 8 of the same year.
This delay was due to the absence from Ottawa of
certain government officials whose approval was essen-
tial to its promulgation.

During the interim from the passage to the promul-

250 IMPORTED AMERICANS

gation of this act a large number of aliens destined
to the United States, and a greater number destined to
Canada, were permitted to land despite the fact that
the act in question, if enforceable, would have pre-
cluded the possibility of their landing.

Indeed, it was not until said act was made enforce-
able and enforced that a single legal deportation could
have been effected from Canada, so that its promul-
gation may be cited as the one paramount important
feature of the year.

The Bureau having been amply apprised of the fact
that the above-mentioned Canadian legislation is due
solely to revelations made by United States immigrant
inspectors on the Canadian frontier, it will not be
necessary to dwell further on that point than to em-
phasize the fact that this very important matter fur-
nishes both the Canadian and United States gov-
ernments genuine cause for gratification, inasmuch as
both are now capable of dealing satisfactorily with a
very grave question.

I felt constrained to remark in the annual report for
1902 that we must wait for developments in order to
be able to ascertain whether the Canadian exclusion act
would afford the satisfaction anticipated, and expe-
rience has demonstrated that it was quite a proper ob-
servation to make, because it has frequently occurred
that a disagreement of diagnoses has been determined
on the Canadian medical examiner's certificate, which
has led to certain aliens being allowed to land instead
of being deported, as would have been the case had
the United States medical examiner's certificate been
accepted as final.

However, it is a source of pleasure to me to be able
to report that while such cases were painfully numer-
ous during the early period of the enforcement of the
Canadian exclusion act, there has been a tendency to
uniformity of diagnoses, and not only that, but also an
appreciable improvement in the conditions existing be-
tween the officers of the immigration services, Cana-
dian and United States, respectively.

The superintendent of immigration of the Dominion

LEGISLATION AND EVASION 251

of Canada, Mr. W. D. Scott, has evinced a desire to
give a broad interpretation of the act alluded to. In
this connection it may not be out of place to quote ver-
batim a few sentences from a communication he ad-
dressed to this office on May 28, 1903:

OTTAWA, May 28, 1903.

. . . But it is very clear to me that if these people
are of the class who are likely to be refused by your
commissioners . . . they must be of the class that
would be refused by the Canadian medical officers at
Atlantic seaports.

It is quite true, however, that our examination, so
far as money standard is concerned, is not particularly
strict, but aside from that, on all other points 1 do not
know that there is very much difference between the
general reasons for deportation taken into consider-
ation by the Canadian and United States officials. . . .

Allow me to assure you again that this department
will do everything to cooperate in preventing an unde-
sirable class of people from the Continent to land in
this country.

These sentiments are so plainly indicative of a reali-
zation on the part of the Canadian officials of the
necessity for enlightened action, that comment on them
on my part is unnecessary.

Even a tentative co-operation is a vast improvement
on the methods prevalent prior to September, 1901 (all
of which was reported June 30, 1902), and a continuance
of it may be safely relied on to correct still further
a condition which had become well-nigh intolerable.

During the ten months which were covered by my
report of June 30, 1902, the gateways to the United
States via the Canadian frontier east of Sault Ste
Marie became thoroughly well known to many in-
terested persons, and it became evident to us that the
properly protected gateways were being avoided by
certain classes of immigrants, and it was incumbent
on us to ascertain what outlet was being sought in
lieu of the well-guarded routes.

252 IMPORTED AMERICANS

This investigation revealed a state of things requir-
ing prompt and vigorous action on the part of
the Bureau. It devolved upon me to advise the
Bureau that whatever leak there was was beyond
the western extremity of the jurisdiction of the Mon-
treal office, and to recommend that steps be taken to
"check the current which was all too plainly being
diverted to frontier points west of Sault Ste Marie."

Pursuant to instructions I detailed a corps of well-
trained inspectors and interpreters to duty at Winni-
peg, Manitoba, and at the same time, through the in-
fluence of the Bureau, obtained the acquiescence of the
parties of the second part (to wit, certain Canadian
transportation companies) to Department Circular 97,
dated November i, 1901, to the establishment of a
board of special inquiry at Winnipeg.

The Bureau will have some approximate idea of the
importance of this change when viewing it in the light
of the following figures:

Since the date of the opening of the Winnipeg
office (February 14, 1903) no less than 2,157 immi-
grants have been examined by the board of special in-
quiry, and certificates of admission have been issued
to 1,633, while the surprising number of 524 l have
been rejected for the following causes:

Trachoma 171

Minors dependent on above 128

Likely to become public charge 171

Contract laborers 51

Measles 3

Total 524

The total amount of head tax collected on account
of these immigrants is $3,729, not a dollar of which
would have been collected had this important change
not been made; nor would a single person in the list

1 Including Pembina and Portal.

LEGISLATION AND EVASION 253

of pbjectionables have been denied admission to the
United States, but would have crossed the frontier
without let or hindrance, as thousands of their equally
objectionable kind had been doing for an indefinite
period of time.

The work of the board of special inquiry at Winni-
peg had scarcely commenced when we discovered
that the objectionable aliens whose access to the United
States the Montreal office was established to prevent
were going still farther westward, and rejections are
now not at all uncommon as far west as the borders
of Montana, Idaho, and Washington.

The Bureau saw fit, on March 26, 1903, to promote
the Montreal office from a special inspectorship to a
commissionership, and to extend its jurisdiction to the
Atlantic ports, Halifax, N. S. ; St. John, N. B. ; and
Quebec, Que.

This change added materially to the efficiency of
this Office in view of the fact that it served as a notice
to all concerned that the Bureau was earnestly sup-
porting its force in Canada.

The change also improved conditions at the above-
named ports, as it enabled the officer in charge, As-
sistant Commissioner John Thomas, toco-operate with
the border force to greater advantage, and thus con-
serve to a far greater extent the excellent results at-
tained under his efficient administration.

It has been absolutely necessary for me to apply to
the Bureau quite frequently for additional medical ex-
aminers, inspectors, interpreters, and clerks, since the
close of the last fiscal year, and to the prompt and sat-
isfactory manner in which the Bureau has responded
to those applications is due the remarkable showing
made during the present fiscal year.

On June 30, 1902, the total force numbered 66; now
it numbers 1 16. On careful perusal the records of ad-
missions and rejections will be found to correspond to
the force employed to deal with the situation, and the
maintenance of the present grade of efficient officers

254 IMPORTED AMERICANS

along the entire frontier will enable the Bureau to deal
as satisfactorily with the matter as it deals with it at
United States ocean ports of entry.

During the twelve months ended to-day many per-
sons have applied for admission to the United States
via Canada whose personal appearance and general
conditions should have precluded the possibility of
their having been allowed to embark on any vessel de-
signed to carry passengers under conditions of health
and comfort.

It is only necessary to relate that in some instances
the filthy conditions have been so abominable as to
render it impossible-for pur medical examiners to give
them the attention required by our laws and regula-
tions. The Bureau, like myself, will have to leave it
to conjecture how fellow-passengers huddled together
in the close quarters of an Atlantic liner have endured
the contaminating presence of such persons.

Admission to the United States has been invariably
denied to such applicants, and in some instances it has
been deemed unwise to return them to Canada, and
deportation to Europe has been effected.

1 shall not attempt to draw a picture of the situation
as it now appears, for the accompanying figures are so
fraught with food for reflection that embellishment
would be superfluous. However, it may be well to
emphasize a few of the more important features rep-
resented by these figures.

We have always contended that large numbers of
aliens destined to the United States were designedly
manifested to Canada, and while there has been some
effort made by the steamship lines to correct this evil
by refusing passage to the more obviously diseased
(some 150 such refusals have been reported by all the
"lines"), it is to be regretted that the improvement
has not been on broader lines. I have used the words
"obviously diseased " advisedly, because the decrease
is most noticeable in that class of diseased persons
whose ailments cannot be hidden.

For instance, during the ten months ended June 30,
1902, as many as ninety-six cases of favus were rejected

LEGISLATION AND EVASION 255

at the Montreal office alone. It was at that time that the
agitation on this question in Canada was kept up with
considerable vigor, in view of which the weeding-out
process was undertaken at ports of embarkation.

Favus, as you know, shockingly disfigures its vic-
tims, eating out the hair, producing disgusting scalp
sores until cured, which is often deferred until the
head is totally denuded of hair.

An examination at ports of embarkation almost in-
variably leads to a detection of this disease, and they
who are afflicted with it are most likely to be set aside.
That such has been the case there is little room for
doubt, as you will observe, against ninety-six cases of
favus for ten months last year only forty-four such
cases are reported for the Montreal local office for the
entire year, and only seven of these have been re-
ported since January i, 1903, a date coincident with
the commencement of actual enforcement of the
Canadian act aforementioned.

Another dangerous and dreaded disease, which is
more difficult of detection, has not been marked by any
such decrease; in fact, the very opposite result is
shown. Even at the Montreal office, where the
classes of immigrants applying for certificates of ad-
mission to the United States show such marked im-
provement over last year, there has been an increase
in the number of trachoma cases.

Increases in trachomatous applicants elsewhere than
at the Montreal office may be safely ascribed to the ex-
tended field of our operations and the increased force
of inspectors assigned to duty at border stations.
Practically no rejections were reported west of Port
Huron last year, whereas the present year's work fur-
nishes a greater number of border rejections west of
Port Huron than east of it.

The accompanying tabulated figures will suffice to
inform you as to the classes rejected, showing the na-
tionalities furnishing the greatest number of objection-
ables and the steamship lines carrying them.

Taken as a whole, without special explanatory ref-
erences, the figures might easily be understood, hence

256 IMPORTED AMERICANS

the necessity for calling attention to certain features
connected with these tables.

The figures given are for the whole year, but the lat-
ter half of the year is quite different from the former
half. The former half may be said to have been quite
normal, while the latter half represents a totally unpre-
cedented condition in Canadian immigration.

The Provincial and Dominion governments have been
exerting themselves most actively to induce immigra-
tion of the "fitter kind," and so well have they suc-
ceeded that all shipping facilities have been utilized to
their utmost capacity to accommodate agricultural set-
tlers, principally for the Northwest, to the almost total
exclusion of passengers from the continent of Europe.

The annual arrivals at Canadian ports since 1892 are
as follows:

Ocean ports only :

1892 27,898

1893 29,632

1894 20,829

1895 18,790

1896 16,835

Total immigration :

1897 21,914

1898 31,900

1899 44,543

1900 (first six months) 23,895

I9°o 49,149

1901-2 67,379

1902-3 (estimated) 114,000

These figures are furnished by the Dominion super-
intendent of immigration, and leave no room for doubt
as to the trend of immigration to Canada, and it is only
proper to state that the large numbers having arrived
since January i, 1903, have been for the most part of
an exceptionally fine class.

A preponderance of agriculturists has characterized
every shipload for the time above specified, and they
have gone to the Northwestern Provinces in search of
homes on the rich and inviting prairies of that vast
country.

It is natural to suppose that a certain percentage of

LEGISLATION AND EVASION 257

them will find themselves unsuited to the new con-
ditions, and such of them as do so will probably seek
admission to the United States, or return to their native
homes. Arrangements have been fully made to gather
actual statistics concerning such of them as may sub-
sequently enter the United States, and these figures
will be furnished you monthly, as per official require-
ments.

Not only has the class of immigrants going to the
Canadian Northwest, during the past three or four
months, been of a highly desirable sort, but the whole
immigration to Canada, for Eastern Provinces and for
the United States, has shown some improvement dur-
ing this time. The two nationalities which gave us
the greatest concern last year have shown very per-
ceptible decreases, /. e., Hebrews and Syrians.

The former were unquestionably sent to the United
States from Europe via Canada to avoid the effects of
examination at United States ports, but on learning
that the Bureau had taken definite and permanent steps
to counteract the deflection from United States ports to
Canadian ports the practice was gradually discontinued,
and now the border boards of special inquiry have com-
paratively few cases of the Hebrew race to examine.

A precisely similar condition prevails as to the Sy-
rians, though in the latter case the change has been
brought about by the vigorous policy of prosecution
which has been waged against professional Syrian
smugglers of aliens into the United States via the Ca-
nadian frontier.

The smugglers' business has been made so difficult,
dangerous, and expensive that most of them have
ceased to advertise in Europe, and in consequence the
arrivals of Syrians and Armenians have appreciably de-
creased; but it is said that they will try to continue
their business on the Mexican border.

The most notable increase has been among the Scan-
dinavians, and as this class generally seeks employ-
ment in agricultural pursuits and avoids the congested
areas of population, it is a happy feature of the work
of the year to be able to report so desirable a change.

258 IMPORTED AMERICANS

We anticipate still further improvement from the
fact that the principal steamship company— that is, the
company carrying the greatest number of undesir-
able immigrants to Canada— has been purchased by the
Canadian Pacific Railway Company, and as the latter
company has shown by its policy that it regards its
covenant with the United States ( Department Circular
07) as an active working instrument, to be observed in
letter and spirit, it is presumed that this spirit will be
extended to the operation of its newly acquired prop-
erty, the immigrant-carrying vessels of the Elder-
Dempster Steamship Company.

There has not yet been sufficient time in which to
note the actual effect of this change, but so far indica-
tions quite warrant the foregoing observation.

Adequate detention quarters have not hitherto been
provided at any of the Canadian ports, and much diffi-
culty has resulted from this lack. No fewer than 150
rejected aliens,at Halifax, N. S. ; St. John, N. B., and Que-
bec, Que., have failed of deportation solely on this ac-
count, but arrangements are now perfected for the
making of necessary provisions of this character, and
further trouble in this connection is not expected.

It ought to be stated that the 150 escapes alluded to
were not allowed to enter the United States, and that
almost the entire number escaped prior to the promul-
gation of the Canadian act of Parliament which legal-
ized deportations.

In the annual report for the fiscal year ended June ^o,
1902, it was recommended that none but strong, vig-
orous, young, and hardy men be assigned to this juris-
diction, and it is with peculiar pleasure that I report
that that recommendation has been literally accepted
and acted upon. It would be a very difficult matter to
find in any given line of work a more capable, efficient,
devoted class of officers than the men who have made
it possible for such a gratifying report as this to be
written.

Covering a direct line of more than 4,000 miles of
frontier, including three ocean ports, and inspecting
more than 100 trains daily and a large number of fer-

LEGISLATION AND EVASION 259

ries, "sound steamers," and the growing fleets that
ply the Great Lakes, these inspectors, in all kinds of
inclement weather, and frequently under most try-
ing circumstances, have boarded every train, met every
ferry and every steamer, whether by river, lake, or
sound, and have prevented the amazing total of 5,158
diseased and otherwise objectionable aliens from en-
tering the United States, and have done all this with-
out delaying either train or boat for a moment, and,
what is still more remarkable, without causing a single
complaint on the part of the traveling public.

This manifests a commendable devotion to duty,
which the Bureau will, no doubt, fully appreciate
when considering the year's work thus completed,
from the view-point of the difficulties incident to its
accomplishment.

The officers are now fully uniformed, as per depart-
ment regulation, and the traveling public no longer re-
sponds reluctantly to the inspectors' interrogatories;
on the contrary, the average traveler is always ready
to impart the information required by law, and many
have shown a willingness to aid the inspectors in de-
tecting the cunning devices of those who live by evad-
ing the law.

The showing of thirty successful captures and pros-
ecutions is a very remarkable one, especially when
viewed in the light of the wide area covered by the
prosecutions. Grand juries all along the line, have
viewed the situation with becoming apprehension, and
by their verdicts have given us substantial aid in our
endeavors to make effective the mandates of Con-
gress.

United States attorneys have also given us very able
support by appropriately presenting all the facts we have
furnished them to the grand juries and the courts.

There are exceptions to every rule, however, and I
regret to have to announce one in this respect.

On May 14, 1903, one Lewis Feighner deliberately
took twenty aliens over the border of North Dakota in

260 IMPORTED AMERICANS

wagons. Of these, nineteen were afflicted with tra-
choma, and all of them had been lawfully excluded
from the United States. Feighner set the law at defiance
and furnished wagon transportation when the railroad
companies refused to carry them.

The whole party was taken into custody at Grand
Forks, N. Dak., and returned to Winnipeg by officers
of the Bureau, and Feighner placed under arrest. The
grand jury indicted him ( Feighner) on June 12, and the
following day rescinded its action, and he is at present
free and unpunished.

On the same date a United States attorney refused to
prosecute an offender of this class for reasons not yet
disclosed.

This offender presented himself at our Winnipeg
office and demanded to know why his brother could
not go to the United States, and he was told that it
was because he was contagiously diseased.

He took said alien into the United States with him,
in utter defiance of the officers of the law. The alien was
arrested on a Treasury Department warrant and in due
time was deported to Europe, and the offender was ar-
rested also and held under bail for action of the grand
jury, but when the grand jury met the United States at-
torney refused to prosecute.

It is difficult to understand why a sworn officer of
the law could refuse to prosecute so serious a violation
of the law.

In striking contrast with this case is that of an alien
who, after being duly inspected at Quebec, forged an ad-
ditional name to his certificate, by virtue of which he
attempted to take a diseased alien with him into the
United States, over the Vermont border. The viola-
tion was discovered, and both were prevented from
entering, the diseased alien being deported, and the
offender has suffered imprisonment in default of bail
(five months) and paid a fine of $50.

Attempts to defeat the law have been made by pro-
viding aliens with naturalization papers, but on inves-
tigation we discovered sufficient evidence to warrant us
in calling the matter to the attention of the Department

LEGISLATION AND EVASION 261

of Justice, and on June 25, 1903, we succeeded in con-
victing the principal figure in the scheme, and he is
now undergoing a two years' term of imprisonment
in the Detroit house of correction.

The public press somewhat severely criticised us
during the month of September, 1902, owing to a
young Syrian girl having committed suicide while be-
ing deported to Europe.

The press did not, however, publish the fact that the
same girl had been twice deported to Europe from
New York, and that when taken into custody at De-
troit she was being smuggled into the United States by
a lawless element who not only ignore our laws but
who derisively defy the officers of the law.

At the time the unfortunate girl took her own life
she was made aware for the first time that the man she
had expected to marry had married another girl some
few weeks previously, and this was probably the real
cause of her rash act. At any rate she was treated
with every humane consideration by us, and so far as
that is concerned, she had no more cause to complain
than any one of the thousands who were similarly de-
ported, none of whom made any complaint of our
treatment of them.

Concerning those who smuggled her into the United
States, we caused their arrest, and the Federal grand
jury, on learning all the facts, indicted the principal,
who was subsequently convicted and fined $250,
which is an appropriate answer to the sensational stor-
ies circulated by a misinformed or a malicious class.

The immigrant inspectors on the frontier are fully
conscious of the fact that the average immigrant who
is detained for cause is far more a fit object for pity
than one deserving censure, and while called upon to
perform the unpleasant duty of denying them the cov-
eted admission to the United States, that duty is in-
variably performed with a maximum of humane con-
sideration.

It is due to the two principal railroads, who are sig-
natories to the agreement under which we are operat-
ing, to state that their interpretation of the agreement,

262 IMPORTED AMERICANS

clause by clause and line by line, has been in exact ac-
cord with the views held by the Bureau.

Free and full access to all their trains has been ac-
corded your inspectors, free transportation being fur-
nished them that the inspections may be completed be-
fore the trains reach the border.

They have removed from their trains at the border
all objectionable aliens, and have detained them at their
own expense until the Government's disposition of
them has been made.

Their instructions to all ticket agents and train hands
have been in keeping with our requests, and one result
of these instructions has been the refusal to sell tickets
to more than 7,000 aliens until they first produce evi-
dence to prove their admissibility to the United States,
and in every case they have directed said aliens to the
nearest United States immigration office.

So far as these railway lines are concerned, up to this
time there is nothing left to be desired as to the obser-
vation of the terms of the agreement into which they
have entered with the United States Government in re-
gard to immigration.

A reference to the number of exclusions on account
of violation of the alien contract-labor laws will be of
undoubted interest.

Employers have unquestionably made use of Canada
as a source through which to draw employees in many
branches of industry. The testimony of the rejected
aliens under this head leaves no room for doubt on this
point, and while we have been unable to deport any of
them direct to Europe from a Canadian port, admission
to the United States has been denied them, and they
have been compelled to remain in Canada.

Some of them have subsequently tried to effect sur-
reptitious entry to the United States, but owing to the
system of inspection in vogue all along the line they
have failed, and for their temerity have been deported
to Europe via New York, and the pursuance of this
policy has had a very salutary effect on others, who are
quite as anxious to evade the law, but who are of less
defiant demeanor.

LEGISLATION AND EVASION 263

During the periods of great industrial strife, to wit,
the anthracite coal strike and cotton workers' lockout
at Lowell, Mass., it required constant and unflagging
attention to duty on the part of the entire force to pre-
vent violations of the alien contract-labor laws, and the
Bureau will doubtless agree with me that the absence
of the serious complaint on the part of the United States
workmen involved amply attests that the law was re-
markably well enforced under the circumstances.

It is the common opinion of all the inspectors at im-
portant border gateways that the majority of aliens
seeking admission to the United States in violation of
the alien contract-labor law are thoroughly advised be-
fore leaving Europe that the Canadian frontier affords
the easiest access to the United States ; indeed their
testimony compels this conclusion.

Special cases might be mentioned in wearying de-
tail, but I purpose mentioning one case only, andwill
ask you to accept it as a criterion and to judge whether
it justifies the conclusion aforementioned

On June 6, 1903, fifty-four aliens applied for admis-
sion to the United States at Winnipeg, Manitoba, their
destination being Caro, Mich.

The testimony of this party conclusively proved that
they were engaged in Europe, that all tneir expenses
were paid by their prospective employers, and that
they were advised to reach their destination via Win-
nipeg, Manitoba. This route involved a journey of
2,000 miles farther than was necessary and a corre-
sponding unnecessary expense.

There can be but one reason for this, and that is that
the Canadian frontier as far west as Sault Ste Marie
was known to be well guarded, while the frontier
west of that point was supposed to be wide open, and
it goes without saying that for the same reason the
United States ocean ports of entry were also avoided.

Special stress must be laid on the recommendation
that none but young, active, strong, and robust men
should be assigned to duty on the frontier, and they

264 IMPORTED AMERICANS

should be selected with a view to putting none but
men of good judgment in these places of unusual im-
portance and responsibility.

A maintenance of the present system of border in-
spection must inevitably reflect the wisdom thereof in
the returns of the almshouses, hospitals, asylums, and
other places of refuge which aliens have previously
been wont to seek, for of the 5,158 denied admission
at border stations it is not improbable that a very large
number of them would already be a charge on the tax-
payers of whatever community in which they might
nave settled had they been admitted, and the 1,439 suf-
fering from the dangerous, loathsome, contagious
diseases would certainly have been a hidden menace to
public health, and an element of deterioration to the
general hygienic standard of the States in which they
would have settled.

Every one of the diseased aliens reported herein was
examined under most careful circumstances by a corps
of medical examiners of high repute for proficiency,
whose official certificates in writing are on file here in
each and every case, which will, when duly consid-
ered, serve to demonstrate what a very serious omis-
sion it was to leave the frontier subject to the methods
in vogue until recently in matters of immigration.

This report will undoubtedly show that immigration
from foreign contiguous territory is susceptible of ade-
quate control, and the Government can select its future
citizens with as much care through this channel as
through its ocean ports of arrival, and successfully ex-
clude all who would tend to pollute rather than to pro-
mote the general body politic.
Respectfully,

ROBERT WATCHORN, Commissioner.
Hon. F. P. SARGENT,
Commissioner-General of Immigration,
Washington, D. C.

Of new legislation there is an abundance in prospect,
varying all the way from the carefully considered bill

Nicola Curro at Work — Ina Americanized — Saint's Figure,
Covered with Bags of Money

LEGISLATION AND EVASION 265

introduced by Senator Lodge, of Massachusetts, to im-
pose an educational test and exclude illiterate immi-
grants, to the wildly impractical measure introduced
by Representative Adams, of Pennsylvania, a Congress-
man from a district that is filling up with immigrants,
and who would limit the number of aliens who may
enter the country in any one year to 80,000. I won-
der how he would select them from a million, by com-
petitive examinations in twenty languages and three
hundred dialects, and a series of gymnastic events to
determine physical fitness ? What proportion of men,
women, or children would he admit ?

Representative Simmons has introduced a bill which
would establish a system of State bureaus which
should set forth to arriving immigrants the advantages
of each particular portion of the country. If all or even
a large portion of the immigrants came with unsettled
plans or uncertain destinations, this would be an ex-
cellent plan, providing that Italian farmers, who are
accustomed to farming with a spade, were not de-
flected to agricultural districts where sulky plows and
three-horse teams are necessary, and Scandinavian
agriculturists, learning of the wealth of the valley of
the Red River, did not go there expecting to maintain
their health in a climate entirely different in the mean
from that to which they have been accustomed.

There is a great amount of wisdom in portions of
the following extracts from Commissioner Sargent's last
Report, selected from under the titles of " Distribution
and Naturalization" and "New Legislation," and each
recommendation would undoubtedly serve to increase
the efficiency of our present system and bring about a
betterment of the condition of immigrants at present
in the country as well as to assist those who might ar-

266 IMPORTED AMERICANS

rive in future; but their great drawback is that they
are patches on a system which is fundamentally wrong
in itself.

It is impossible for any but the most reckless or fool-
ishly optimistic to consider the figures presented in this
report without realizing their serious bearing upon our
well-being. It is not alone that virtually 1,000,000
aliens have been added to our population within the
brief space of one year, although that fact is one of
large dimensions. The constituent elements of this
great army of invasion are to be considered, their indi-
vidual character and capacity for useful work, their
respect for law and order, their ability to stand the
strain — morally, physically, mentally — of the life of their
new surroundings; in other words, the power to as-
similate with the people of this country and thus be-
come a source of strength for the support of American
institutions and civilization instead of a danger in
periods of strain and trial. To doubt that they possess
such ability is to discredit unvarying human experience.
Human beings vary not so much because of any in-
herent difference of nature as because of difference in
the molding influences of which at every stage of de-
velopment they are the product. All instruction of
mind and training of body constitute a practical recog-
nition of this fact. The problem presented, therefore,
to enlightened intelligence for solution, is how may the
possibility— nay, probability— of danger from an enor-
mous and miscellaneous influx of aliens be converted,
by a wise prevision and provision, into a power for
stability and security ? If such a solution can be ob-
tained, it seems the part of foolhardiness to make no
effort to that end, to trust fatuously to the circumstance
that, though numerically immigration was years ago
nearly as large in proportion to our population as it now
is, no very serious ill resulted from the failure to take
any especial care in reference to it other than an in-
spection at the time of arrival.

In my judgment the smallest part of the duty to be

LEGISLATION AND EVASION 267

discharged in successfully handling alien immigrants
with a view to the protection of the people and insti-
tutions of this country is that part now provided for
by law. Its importance, though undeniable, is rela-
tively of secondary moment. It cannot, for example,
compare in practical value with, nor can it take the
place of, measures to ensure the distribution of the
many thousands who come in ignorance of the indus-
trial needs and opportunities of this country, and, by
a more potent law than that of supply and demand,
which speaks to them here in an unknown tongue,
colonizes alien communities in our great cities. Such
colonies are a menace to the physical, social, moral,
and political security of the country. They are hot-
beds for the propagation and growth of those false
ideas of political and personal freedom whose germs
have been vitalized by ages of oppression under un-
equal and partial laws, which find their first concrete
expression in resistance to constituted authority, even
occasionally in the assassination of the lawful agents
of that authority. They are the breeding-grounds also
of moral depravity; the centres of propagation of
physical disease. Above all, they are the congested
places in the industrial body which check the free cir-
culation of labor to those parts where it is most needed
and where it can be most benefited. Do away with
them, and the greatest peril of immigration will be re-
moved.

Removed from the sweat-shops and slums of the
great cities, and given the opportunity to acquire a
home, every alien, however radical his theories of
government and individual right may have been, will
become a conservative — a supporter in theory and
practice of those institutions under whose benign pro-
tection he has acquired and can defend his household
goods. Suitable legislation is therefore strongly urged
to establish agencies by means of which, either with or
without the co-operation of the States, aliens shall be
made acquainted with the resources of the country at
large, the industrial needs of the various sections in
both skilled and unskilled labor, the cost of living, the

268 IMPORTED AMERICANS

wages paid, the price and capabilities of the lands, the
character of the climates, the duration of the seasons, —
in short, all of that information furnished by some of
the great railway lines through whose efforts the terri-
tory tributary thereto has been transformed from a
wilderness within a few years to the abiding-place of
a happy and prosperous population.

Another means of obviating danger from our grow-
ing immigration is the enactment of legislation to pre-
vent the degrading of the electorate through the unlaw-
ful naturalization of aliens. Undoubtedly such natural-
ization is now often granted upon very insufficient evi-
dence of the statutory period of residence, a looseness in
the practice of the courts which is fostered by the heat
and zeal of partisanship in political contests. It rests with
Congress to prevent such abuses, and the consequent
distrust in the popular mind of the purity of elections,
by establishing additional requirements to be complied
with by aliens seeking the privilege of citizenship.

Within the past year the Bureau has established at
the various ports of entry a card-index system, by ref-
erence to which the date of the arrival and personal
identity can be readily verified. To require every alien
applicant for naturalization to produce a certified copy
of such record, attested by the signature and seal of
the custodian thereof, would substitute for the oral
testimony of professional witnesses written evidence
of an entirely reliable character.

In addition to the new legislation recommended, I
have to suggest that Congress be urged to strike out
from section i of the act approved March 3, 1903, the
words which exempt transportation companies from
the payment of the head tax for aliens brought by
them, respectively, who profess to be merely transits
to foreign territory. It is believed that that provision
was retained in the act through a clerical error, and its
elimination is recommended because of the embarrass-
ments, both to the transportation lines and to the
Bureau, in its enforcement. The amount saved to the
passenger carriers is too trivial to justify the labor and
delay involved in ascertaining who are actually transits,

LEGISLATION AND EVASION 269

and under the law not properly subject to the head
tax, and who are merely professing to be such.

The new law referred to above has not been in op-
eration long enough to enable the Bureau to point out
specific defects other than that one just cited; but it
was so carefully drawn and so aptly embodies the re-
sults of the Bureau's experience in the ten years of the
latter's existence, that the best results are anticipated.

Irrespective of the effect in diminishing the number
of alien arrivals, now approximating 1,000,000 annually,
I am impressed with the importance of still further
measures to improve the quality of those admitted.
Such measures would be merely additional steps in the
same direction already taken in dealing with the ques-
tion of immigration to this country. They would in-
volve no new departure from a policy which has been
pursued for years, and which therefore may now be
assumed to be a fixed principle of the United. States in
dealing with this subject. From this point of view it
seems not unjust to require of aliens seeking admission
to this country at least so much mental training as is
evidenced by the ability to read and write. This re-
quirement, whatever arguments or illustrations may be
used to establish the contrary position, will furnish
alien residents of a character less likely to become bur-
dens on public or private charity. Otherwise it must
follow that rudimentary education is a handicap in the
struggle for existence, a proposition that few would
attempt to maintain. It would also, in a measure, re-
lieve the American people of the burden now sustained
by them of educating in the free schools the ignorant
of other countries.

There should also be some requirement as to the
moral character of such persons. The present law ex-
cludes convicts. This only partially accomplishes the
purpose of establishing a moral standard for admission
to this country. Without attempting in the restricted
limits of this report to indicate the method of devising
such legislation, it is sufficient to point to the crim-
inal record in this country of many aliens as a justifica-
tion for this recommendation. Before the close of the

270 IMPORTED AMERICANS

next fiscal year the Bureau will be in possession of
interesting and suggestive data in relation to this
subject.

For the purpose of distributing arriving aliens in
accordance with the plan already outlined, it is recom-
mended that suitable legislation be enacted for the
establishment, in connection with the various immigra-
tion stations, more particularly the Ellis Island station,
of commodious quarters, properly officered, where
information may be given to the new arrivals. In such
quarters should be displayed maps of the different
States, with descriptive matter as to the resources and
products of each State, the prices of land, the routes
of travel thereto and cost of transportation, the oppor-
tunities for employment in the various skilled and un-
skilled occupations, the rates of wages paid, the cost
of living, and all other information that would enlighten
such persons as to the inducements to settlement
therein offered respectively by the various sections of
the United States. I believe that such a plan is entirely
practicable, and that its adoption offers at once the
easiest and most efficient solution of the serious prob-
lems presented by the enormous additions of alien pop-
ulation to our great cities, and the resultant evils both
to the people of this country and to the immigrants.

For the purpose of forming an approximately accu-
rate estimate of the actual annual increase of the popu-
lation of the United States by the immigration of aliens,
it is recommended that measures be taken to obtain
information of the number of aliens departing annually.
These figures will be valuable to students of the sub-
ject as presenting both sides of the case, and will cor-
rect the extravagant estimates that may be made from
reports of arrivals only as to the actual size of our alien
population.

I do not think it is an unwarranted assumption to say
that in the foregoing chapters the frauds which are en-
acted for and among immigrants who sail from the
southern portions of Europe are well disclosed, and

LEGISLATION AND EVASION 271

that sufficient light is thrown on the dark corners of
the situation to enable thinking people to consider
understandingly the tremendous problem before the
nation ; but for corroboration of statements made and
for new information of a most pointed and direct
nature I beg to submit the major portion of the report
of Special Immigrant-Inspector Marcus Braun,1 who
left the United States two or three months previous to
the departure of my wife and myself. It considers
many conditions among classes of immigrants which,
while not so numerous as the Italians, are nevertheless
most important factors in the question. Mr. Braun
says:

NEW YORK, N. Y., August 24, 1903.
SIR: I have the honor to make the following report,
pursuant to authority contained in Bureau Letter No.
35,719, dated March 21, 1903, authorizing me "to pro-
ceed to such points in Europe as may be necessary for
the purpose of procuring information concerning cer-
tain knowledge believed to be possessed by the Italian
authorities as to emigration of undesirable aliens to the
United States, and also in regard to persons who are
booking diseased and otherwise inadmissible aliens to
Vera Cruz en route to points in the United States."
This report is likewise made pursuant to directions
received from you in personal interviews had on March
23, 1903, authorizing me to procure general information
and evidence, where practicable, concerning the large
influx to the United States of undesirable and inadmis-
sible aliens, and the methods employed by steamship
companies, agents in their employ, or other persons,
to induce such emigration, as is more specifically enum-
erated in Bureau memoranda containing the follow-
ing specific questions and directions:

" i. What steps do the steamship companies take at

1 Exhibits mentioned in Mr. Braun's report are omitted.

272 IMPORTED AMERICANS

European ports to ascertain if their passengers are
eligible for admission under the law ?

"2. What secret instructions are given to such pas-
sengers at the various rendezvous where the govern-
ment officials make their examinations ? Examinations
usually made twenty-four hours before sailing. This
is particularly true of London and Liverpool.

"3. How many undesirable aliens are brought from
the Continent to the Jewish shelters in Whitechapel,
London, weekly, and are there put through a purifying
process preparatory to being shipped to the United
States via Canada ?

"4. What steps are being taken at Marseille, Ant-
werp, and Chiasso to deflect diseased aliens from the
United States ports to Canada and Mexico ?

"5. Do Canadian lines really reject passengers for
cause at Liverpool, as stated by them; and if so, what
percentage, and for what causes ?

"6. Are immigrants induced to ship to Canada, who
would otherwise have shipped to the United States, by
reason of a cheaper fare, to wit, the $2 head tax ?

"7. Do all Canadian lines make the two rates indi-
cated ? If not, which ones do ?

"8. Does Anton Fares, a 'runner' at Marseille, act
direct for certain lines ? If so, which ones ?

"9. It is very important to ascertain if Frederic Lud-
wig still represents the Beaver Line at Chiasso.

" 10. Ascertain how Hamburg- American Packet
Company secures the miserable people they put off at
Halifax, while carrying to New York on same line or
ship acceptable aliens.

"ii. Note particularly report of Mr. Watchorn, a
copy of which will be supplied. Would also recom-
mend getting copy of January, 1903, Blackwood's
Magazine and noting article therein on Immigration."

I desire, in addition thereto, to refer to directions con-
tained in Bureau letter No. 36,663, dated April 6, 1903,
directing me to observe whether the requirements of
section 8 of the act of March 3, 1893, are being com-
plied with, to the effect "that all steamship or trans-

LEGISLATION AND EVASION 273

portation companies engaged in the transportation- of
aliens shall keep exposed to view in their offices abroad,
where tickets are sold to emigrants, a copy of the
United States immigration laws, printed in large letters
in the language of the country where such offices are
located, and to instruct their agents, moreover, to call
the attention thereto of persons contemplating emi-
gration, etc."

Subsequent to my return from Washington, after
receiving above instructions and directions, and until
my departure on April 9, 1903, 1 was in daily attend-
ance at the Immigration Bureau at Ellis Island for the
purpose of familiarizing myself with the work of the
Department as conducted at that station.

On April o, 1901, I sailed on the steamship Deutsch-
land, bouna for Hamburg, Germany, and arrived at
the latter place April 17, 1903. Having received no
specific instructions concerning any particular route
which I was to travel to procure the information de-
sired, and owing to the fact that I frequently received
information which did not permit of a systematic or
straight line of travel, and prompted also by the desire
to procure authentic information at the very home of
the emigrant, I followed occasional instances and cases
as they presented themselves to me.

In all I traveled about 25,000 miles by railroad and
about 600 miles by special conveyances, visiting sub-
stantially all the provinces and crown lands of the fol-
lowing countries: Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia,
Roumania, Switzerland, Italy, France, Belgium, Hol-
land, and Great Britain, making special studies of the
subjects involved at the following European ports:
Hamburg, Bremen, Stettin, Fiume, Trieste, Odessa,
Naples, Genoa, Marseille, St. Nazaire, Havre, Antwerp,
Rotterdam, Southampton, London, and Liverpool.

I find upon investigation that the steamship com-
panies carrying emigrants from Naples, Hamburg, and
Rotterdam are subjecting such emigrants to a strict
medical examination for the purpose of ascertaining
whether or not they are afflicted with any dangerous
contagious disease which might prevent their landing

274 IMPORTED AMERICANS

in the United States; this can be said of almost all
European ports, but is more strictly enforced at the
three ports enumerated; at the other ports there is a
disposition to be more lax in this respect, particularly
at Havre, France, where, in the search for persons
afflicted with trachoma, the eyeball is merely examined,
and no eyelid is turned up as at the other three ports
mentioned above ; the additional method of the physical
examination employed is to require the emigrant to
hold up his hands, which, of course, does not permit
the discovery of any other ailments except those visible
to the naked eye. Questions are also asked the emi-
grants concerning other grounds of inadmissibility,
such as whether the emigrant is a criminal or an ex-
convict, but no further investigation is made in this
respect and the answers given by the emigrant are
deemed sufficient.

I did not discover any secret instruction given to
passengers at the points of embarkation ; the usual
questions are asked of the emigrants, and if correctly
answered they are permitted to proceed, otherwise
they are refused ; the latter, however, is a rare occur-
rence, for the reason that almost all of these emigrants
arrive at the ports thoroughly instructed, such instruc-
tions being given them before they start upon their
journey by subagents in the employ of the steamship
companies or their general agencies. While I have no
direct proof that the steamship companies are directly
concerned or even tolerate the giving of these secret
instructions, yet I learned in the course of my travels,
particularly in the countries of Austria-Hungary and
Russia, that a large number of reputable persons, such
as priests, school-teachers, postmasters, and county
notaries, are directly connected with certain agents
representing these steamship companies, and that they
advise and instruct the emigrants how to procure
steamship tickets, passports, and all other things neces-
sary for their travel, for all of which they receive a
commission from the agent employing them. It is ob-
vious that since the amount of the earnings depends
entirely upon the amount of business procured, hence,

LEGISLATION AND EVASION 275

in their anxiety, the subagents above enumerated, by
promises and in order to earn a commission, induce a
large number of persons to leave their homes and
come to the United States. The governments of each
of these countries, in good faith, are endeavoring to
stop this sort of traffic and provide for the punishment
of any person inducing another to leave the country ;
but 1 found that in many of the towns visited the local
authorities are in league with the subagents, and their
business thrives practically with the consent of the
officials whose duty it is to prevent it ; this is particu-
larly true of Austria-Hungary, as I was able to ascer-
tain from personal interviews with a large number of
emigrants at the Austro-Prussian border. I also ascer-
tained that a majority of these people act for and are
in the employ of F. Missler at Bremen, and The Anglo
Continentales Reise-Bureau at Rotterdam. Upon ob-
taining this information, together with specific data,
names and addresses of these so-called subagents, I
laid the matter before Dr. Koerber, prime minister of
Austria, and Coloman de Szell, prime minister of Hun-
gary. They at first appeared incredulous, and the lat-
ter called my attention to the newly enacted prohibi-
tive emigration laws of Hungary, a copy of which,
together with translations thereof, is hereto annexed
and marked "Exhibit A, No. I" and "Exhibit A, No.
II." However, upon my submitting to them the infor-
mation which I had in my possession, including the
names and addresses of people who were acting as
such agents, an investigation was caused at their in-
stance, a number of arrests made, and convictions had
for the illegal solicitation of emigration. The names
of these persons, together with their addresses and vo-
cations, and the periods for which they were sentenced,
are annexed hereto and marked " Exhibit A, No. III."
The police officials in the course of the investigation
made, which led to the arrest of these men, confiscated
a large number of letters and literature containing offers
and inducements to emigrate. The agencies whence
this literature emanated also flood the respective coun-
tries, particularly Hungary and Croatia, with similar

276 IMPORTED AMERICANS

literature through the mails, but great vigilance is ex-
ercised by the authorities, and most of these letters,
bearing the postmark of Hamburg, Bremen, or Rotter-
dam, are confiscated and are never delivered to the
addresses, if, in the judgment of the postal officials,
they contain enticing literature respecting emigration.
I have seen at the offices of the ministry at Budapest at
least one-half million of these letters and documents
from time to time confiscated, and through the courtesy
of the Hungarian Government I was enabled to pro-
cure a few ,of the letters which I annex hereto and
mark respectively " Exhibit B, No. I, II, III, IV, V, and
VI." Some of this literature has features quite amus-
ing, and I respectfully beg to submit to you a copy,
together with a liberal translation of two poems,
marked "Exhibit C I, and C II," intended to work
upon the susceptibility of the plain peasant in order to
induce him to emigrate. I also invite particular atten-
tion to a slip which is invariably contained in such let-
ters sent through the mails by F. Missler, of Bremen,
a copy of which, together with the translation thereof, is
hereto annexed and marked "Exhibit D." The idea of
sending out this slip appears to be to create the person
to whom it is sent a sort of a subagent, by offering him
a compensation of eight crowns for every steamship
ticket that he succeeds in selling to an emigrant, and
through this offer any number of persons are engaged
as subagents for F. Missler, at Bremen. The Anglo-
Continentales Reise-Bureau at Rotterdam is also
engaged in sending out personal letters to peas-
ants, containing offers of commission, provided they
will procure for them the sale of steamship tickets. I
herewith annex one of such letters, with a translation,
marked " Exhibit E."

With reference to written question No. 3, I visited
the Poor Jews Temporary Shelter, at 84 Leman Street,
Whitechapel, London, and there interviewed the su-
perintendent, Mr. J. Sonper, from whom I learned that
on the average 500 Russian, Polish, and Roumanian
Jews are brought there weekly by steamer from either
Antwerp or Rotterdam, and are detained at the Home

LEGISLATION AND EVASION 277

until they are enabled to raise sufficient money with
which to prepay their passage to America, or until they
are in a sufficiently good condition to be acceptable to
the steamship companies at the port at which they in-
tend to embark. Mr. Sonper himself acts as an agent
for various steamship companies, and informed me
that since the Canadian Government is equally strict as
the United States Government in the medical examina-
tion of emigrants he tries to induce persons to go to
South Africa, but so far he has met with poor success,
for the reason that persons under his care all have a
desire to go to the United States. He cited instances
to me where people were detained by him at the Jew-
ish Home for as long a period as six months in order
that they may be properly prepared for their proposed
trip.

A more adequate and definite idea of the scope and
activity of the Poor Jews Temporary Shelter may be
had by examining the last three annual reports of the
organization, a copy of each of which is hereto an-
nexed and marked " Exhibit X I, II, and III."

Concerning the steps taken at Marseille, Antwerp,
and Chiasso to deflect the diseased emigrants from the
United States ports to Canada and Mexico, I beg to
state the following: At Chiasso this practice has been
largely discontinued since the strict enforcement of the
immigration laws of the United States and the strict
observance of the medical examinations at Canadian
ports. At Antwerp the practice is still prevailing,
though in a lesser degree, the information given to such
emigrant being that he sail to England, preferably to
London, whence his departure and opportunity of
landing in the United States will be much easier than
from any other port. The " hotbed " for the deflection
of such diseased emigrants, a majority of whom come
from Syria, Armenia, and Greece, is Marseille. There
are in Marseille about a half-dozen duly licensed and
properly appointed steamship agencies, each of whom
employs its "runners," the most unscrupulous of
whom is one Anton Fares, the publisher of the Syrian
weekly Al Mircad. These runners are at a landing

278 IMPORTED AMERICANS

whenever a steamer having such emigrants aboard
arrives from Syria, Turkey, or Greece. These emi-
grants are then taken charge of by the runners and es-
corted to the various emigrants' headquarters to be
there examined and classified. Such of these emi-
grants who are not afflicted with some disease receive
the ordinary instructions and are shipped via regular
ports of embarkation, mostly Havre and Boulogne.
Those found suffering from trachoma or favus are then
thoroughly instructed and are told that the only way
for them to effect an entrance to the United States is
to embark at St. Nazaire, France, and sail on the ships
of the French line (Compagnie Generale Transatlan-
tique) for Vera Cruz, Mexico, and, according to the
personal statement made to me by Fares, those emi-
grants are then escorted across the Mexican border to
the United States by friends or people with whom he
is connected in a business way. Heretofore entry into
the United States from Mexico was effected by way of
Laredo, El Paso, or Eagle Pass, but since the detention
and deportation of some of these emigrants who thus
effected an entry to the United States this method was
abandoned and the above method resorted to. I veri-
fied this statement by personal investigation at St.
Nazaire and from interviews had with the Mexican
and Cuban consuls and the manager of the Compagnie
Generale Transatlantique, each of whom informed me
that no fewer than 250 emigrants leave that port on
the 2ist day of each and every month for Mexico. I
briefly referred to this condition of things in my report
to the Department, dated, respectively, Marseille, June
28, 1903, and Paris, July 10, 1903. So alarming did I
find these conditions at St. Nazaire that I was prompted
thereby to address my cablegram to the Department
on July 13, 1903, suggesting a close watch on the
Mexican border outside of regular railroad passes, and
I also briefly referred to these matters in subsequent
communications to the Department. I also ascertained
that all of the steamers plying between St. Nazaire,
France, and Vera Cruz, Mexico, are controlled and
operated by the Compagnie Generale Transatlantique,

LEGISLATION AND EVASION 279

and that emigrants are booked directly from Beirut,
Syria, via Marseille and St. Nazaire, to Vera Cruz, as
more fully stated in my previous communications to
the Department on this subject.

Regarding the question as to whether Canadian lines
really reject passengers for cause at Liverpool, and
what percentage and for what causes, 1 beg to state
that I have visited the various emigrant lodging-houses
at Liverpool controlled by the White Star, Cunard, Do-
minion, American, Allan, and Canadian Pacific Railroad
(Beaver Line) lines, and found that the emigrants are
subjected to a strict medical examination, and those
found suffering from trachoma or favus are promptly
rejected, the proportion of such rejections not exceed-
ing two per cent.

As to whether or not emigrants are induced to ship
to Canada, who would otherwise have shipped to the
United States, by reason of a cheaper fare or because
of the $2 head tax, I respectfully submit that such
emigrants are frequently, and in a large number of
cases, induced to ship to Canada. The reason for
this, however, is not the desire to avoid the $2 head
tax, but because of the cheaper railroad fares charged
to emigrants in the Dominion of Canada by the Cana-
dian Pacific Railroad. In every such case the emigrant
is invariably told that upon landing he must state his
destination to be some place or town in Canada, where
he intends to settle. Having thus availed themselves
of the advantage of a cheaper fare, they then await
the coming of an agent or some person connected with
the agency where they purchased their tickets, and
are escorted across the border into the United States.

In regard to the inquiry as to whether all the Cana-
dian lines make the two rates indicated, I desire to
report that heretofore the Beaver Line charged a cheaper
rate of fare than the other Canadian lines; this, how-
ever, has been abandoned, and at present a uniform
rate is charged over all Canadian lines. I had an in-
teresting and lengthy interview with Mr. I. I. Gilbert-
son, the Liverpool traffic agent of the Canadian Pacific
Railway, which now operates the former Beaver Line

280 IMPORTED AMERICANS

under the name of the Pacific Railway line, and learned
from him that, while the line he represented was not
in the steamship pool, he was upholding the regular
rates of the pool, and had no intention of deviating
therefrom. He added that he regretted very much
the bad repute into which the Beaver Line had gotten,
and, while he admitted that it was partly justified, he
thought that it was worse than deserved. Mr. Gilbert-
son also told me that all of the Continental agents of
his line have been fully and thoroughly instructed to
comply strictly with the immigration laws of both the
United States and Canada in booking passengers, and
that under no circumstances would tickets be sold to
passengers for Quebec or Montreal whose original
destination is some part of the United States.

In reply to the inquiry as to whether Anton Fares, a
runner at Marseille, acts direct for certain lines, I beg
to refer to my previous reports to the Department
made in this connection, wherein I stated, among
other things, that Fares does not represent any line
directly, but that his services are very much sought
after by all of the agencies established at Marseille, and
I reiterate that he is one of the most dangerous and
unscrupulous men in the business.

Replying to the inquiry as to whether Frederic Lud-
wig still represents the Beaver Line at Chiasso, 1 like-
wise beg to refer to my report on this subject, dated
Chiasso, June 25, 1903, and 1 reiterate that Ludwig still
represents the Beaver Line at Chiasso, but apparently
does not book any diseased emigrants and invariably
causes a physician to examine his passengers. In all
other respects, however, I found Ludwig as active,
energetic, and reckless in the pursuit of his business
as ever before, as a result of which he was arrested in
Italy for soliciting emigration, released on bail of 20,000
lire pending his trial, and subsequently "jumped" his
bail, forfeiting the amount.

In regard to the question as to how the " Hamburg-
American Packet Company secures the miserable peo-
ple they put off at Halifax, while carrying to New
York on same line or ship acceptable aliens," I respect-

Nicola Curro Studying English in the Author's Home in
New York

LEGISLATION AND EVASION 281

fully refer to my report dated Jassy, June 17, 1903. I
endeavored to ascertain the method by which these
persons referred to were procured, and for this pur-
pose had an interview at the steamship office of
George Stoeckel, at Odessa, by whose representative,
Johann Bischof, I was informed that the main reasons
for sending emigrants into the United States via Hali-
fax were the cheaper rate and the possibility of evad-
ing the immigration laws at the Canadian border with
greater success than at the United States ports.
Realizing that diseased and afflicted emigrants have
to undergo a close inspection at a United States port,
this agency of Stoeckel's makes it a practice to solicit
the business of such people with the thorough under-
standing that they are to travel via Halifax. The said
agency has a number of subagents traveling all over
the southern part of Russia, ostensibly engaged as
agents for agricultural implements, representing some
American firm, but in reality only to dispose of steam-
ship tickets and seek out such persons who have fears
about traveling owing to some affliction which would
prevent their admittance at a United States port.
These people are given every assurance that if travel-
ing via Halifax they will have to undergo very little
inspection, if any, and can obtain admittance into the
United States without difficulty. It seems immaterial
to these agents whether the emigrant would be per-
mitted to land or not, even at Halifax, for in the latter
case he would be deported, with no probability of his
ever returning to Russia, and hence the agent would
escape all liability. Subsequent to this interview I
called on Mr. A. Storm, manager of the passenger de-
partment of the Hamburg-American Line at Hamburg,
and called his attention to this practice, whereupon he
showed me copies of personal letters written to all of
the agents warning them not to book any emigrants
via Halifax intended for the United States, with in-
struction that such emigrants would be refused, and,
moreover, the agents would forfeit all commissions,
the agency being withdrawn from them in addition.
My personal investigation seemed to confirm this state-

282 IMPORTED AMERICANS

ment of Mr. Storm, for the reason that prior to my
going to Odessa I frequently found circulars inviting
emigration to the United States via Hamburg to Hali-
fax, one of which circulars I annex to this report,
marked " Exhibit F I." Later on, however, I failed to
find any of these circulars except in rare instances,
but instead found a large number of circulars sent out
by Falck & Co., general agents of the Hamburg-Ameri-
can Line, specially calling the attention of the proposed
emigrants to the advisability of having themselves
examined by a physician prior to their departure, to
ascertain whether they are suffering from trachoma or
favus, and informing them of the fact that if suffering
from any of these diseases they will be barred from
landing in America, regardless as to what route they
took. I inclose two copies of such circulars, one in
Slovak and the other in Hungarian, together with a
translation, marked "Exhibit F II."

Following your instructions to investigate the fact
as to whether steamship companies or transportation
companies engaged in the transportation of aliens
observe the requirements of section 8 of the act of
March 3, 1893, I called your attention in some of my
previous reports to instances where the law was not
observed. However, the law is observed by the ma-
jority of the steamship companies, but, I am satisfied,
not in an effective manner. It is true that a copy of
the law is displayed in the language of the country
where such steamship offices are located, but it is
equally true that very few of the emigrants have the time
or the inclination to read it, and as a large percentage of
them are unable to read at all it tends to make the law
of very little if any value. At the border of Russia
and Germany this law referred to is displayed in the
German language, and I found that the great majority
of emigrants are Russians, Poles, and Hebrews, none of
whom can read or understand the German language.

I desire to invite your particular attention to instruc-
tions contained in Bureau letter No. 35,719, dated
March 21, 1903, authorizing me "to procure informa-
tion concerning certain knowledge believed to be pos-

LEGISLATION AND EVASION 283

sessed by the Italian authorities as to emigration of
undesirable aliens to the United States," and to per-
sonal directions upon this point given me in our in-
terview on March 23, 1903. I have made thorough
investigations to ascertain, if possible, first, whether or
not such knowledge is really possessed by the Italian
authorities, and, second, in what measure this circum-
stance was instrumental in encouraging undesirable
emigration to the United States. I find a general dis-
position on the part of the Italian Government and
authorities to restrict emigration of persons visibly
afflicted by some disease, this restriction being by no
means made for the benefit of the United States, but
because of the opinion that the influx from Italy of
this class of people might cause the United States
Government to enact more prohibitive immigration
laws, a thing very much feared in Italy, for the reason
that Italy considers the United States the best safety
valve for the discharge of its over-population. More
prohibitive immigration legislation on the part of the
United States, if it would materially affect the influx
of Italian emigrants to the United States, might, in the
opinion of the Italian people, have the effect of reducing
a great many of their revenues. I have ascertained
that the prosperity of entire villages in the southern
part of Italy depends upon remittances regularly made
from the United States.

The Italian authorities, as such, profess to have no
such knowledge of undesirable emigration as indicated
in your personal interview with me. Pauperism in
Italy is differently construed than in the United States.
Over there no person, no matter how poor he may be,
is considered a pauper so long as he appears to be
able-bodied and is in a condition to walk about, and
no person is committed to the poorhouse unless
physically disabled to such an extent as to be unable
to be about without the assistance of another, and if
placed in the poorhouse under those circumstances
there is no possibility of their ever attempting to come
to the United States. These are the only paupers of
whom a record is kept by the authorities, and who are

284 IMPORTED AMERICANS

recorded as public charges upon the respective com-
munities. Of the other class of poor people, who are
not only in the prevailing majority, but who constitute
a material part of the Italian population, and who, ac-
cording to American conceptions, would be considered
paupers, no public record is kept, except by the priests
of the respective villages and towns in which they re-
side. These people are considered poor and are de-
pendent upon the charities of the Church. They can
obtain at any time a certificate of poverty, but still
are not recorded as paupers. Mr. Angelo Boragino,
deputy consul of the United States at Genoa, gave me
valuable assistance in my attempt to discover the ex-
istence of such records.

Unlike Italy, all other countries do keep a public
record of their paupers, copies of which are obtainable
at any time. I beg to annex hereto two such authen-
ticated copies of pauper records of the township of
Klenocz, Hungary, and Nyustya, Croatia, marked, re-
spectively " Exhibit G. I " and " Exhibit G. II."

As already reported to you in a previous communi-
cation in reply to Bureau letter No. 36,810, dated
Washington, April 14, 1903, I located Joseph Ellsner at
Littai, Austria, and endeavored to get from him some
information with reference to importation of laborers
under contract into the United States. I succeeded in
obtaining from Mr. Ellsner a copy of a letter addressed
to him by some person from Chicago, asking for 200
able-bodied men to work on the railroad, which letter
I mailed to you, together with my said report to the
Department. I sent you the information that about
i, 800 Croatians are being shipped monthly from Fiume
to the United States. I endeavored to ascertain the
purpose of this large number of emigrants, and found
that quite a number of them, especially in the month
of August of each year, were hired by several Austrian
firms to be sent to Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Missis-
sippi, to cut staves, and that some of these firms,
owing to difficulties which they had in the United
States with these men, who made trouble and threats
against the contractors, abandoned this practice, and it

LEGISLATION AND EVASION 285

is now largely controlled by the firm of Julius Kern &
Co., at Vienna, through whose agency some 300 or
400 men are sent to the United States at certain inter-
vals. I paid particular attention to this firm and em-
ployed the friendly services of Mr. A. Knoepfelmacher,
a journalist, who called at the place of business of Mr.
Kern under the pretext of writing an article upon the
enterprising ability of an Austrian firm, such as Julius
Kern & Co., in dealing so extensively with the United
States. The interview was obtained, and incidentally
Mr. Knoepfelmacher asked questions with reference
to the sending of the contract laborers to the United
States, and some information was given him, with the
strict injunction, however, that no part of it should be
made public. I received a letter from Mr. Knoepfel-
macher which I annex hereto, together with a trans-
lation thereof, marked "Exhibit H," which letter
fairly expresses the contempt of these Europeans at
our contract-labor laws and the ease with which they
evade them. It was admitted by the firm of Julius
Kern & Co. that as many as 1,500 laborers are sent to
the United States under contract, each of whom is
thoroughly instructed as to the manner in which ques-
tions should be answered when arriving in the United
States. Subsequent to the receipt of the letter from
Mr. Knoepfelmacher he accompanied me to the United
States embassy at Vienna, and there, in the presence of
Secretary Rives, repeated the statements contained in
his letter. The information I thus received, together
with the positive knowledge which I possessed that a
great many contract laborers enter the United States
annually, prompted me to pay particular attention to
this subject, and I made various and frequent attempts,
particularly at places and railroad stations where emi-
grants concentrate, to question and interview individ-
uals or groups of emigrants, with a view of learning
their destination or of affirming my belief that they
were laborers under contract, destined for the United
States. Not only did these interrogations confirm my
suspicions, but 1 have become convinced that the im-
portation of contract labor to the United States has as-

286 IMPORTED AMERICANS

sumed alarming proportions of which the Department
cannot form an adequate idea. I base this conviction
not only upon my experience at the various places
where emigrants concentrate, but upon observations
made and collected in numerous villages which I
reached by special conveyance, and in a large number
of which I found that almost the entire male popula-
tion, able to work, was absent, and upon close inquiry
I learned that the men were all in the United States,
having gone there under some contract of labor or
other. This evil is largely contributed to by residents
of the United States engaged in the steamship ticket
and foreign exchange business, and not infrequently
either connected with or publishing some newspaper
in a foreign language. I took occasion to refer to this
phase in one of my previous reports to the Depart-
ment, containing information in point procured by me
at the city of Laibach and from the Government at
Vienna. I am convinced that Fares, at Marseille, also
avails himself of many sources of this character in the
pursuit of his nefarious business, as I was able to
judge from the hundreds of letters I saw delivered to
him, coming from the United States and bearing the
heading of numerous steamship ticket agents and pub-
lishers of Syrian newspapers in this country. Another
method which in my opinion is frequently resorted to
to promote the importation of contract labor is as fol-
lows : A native of a certain village or town abroad, who
had spent some time in the United States, will suddenly
appear at said village, ostensibly on a visit, and within
a short time thereafter he may be met on his return
trip to the United States accom panied by groups of men
whose number vary from ten to twenty-five, according
to circumstances. I have observed such men purchas-
ing a number of railroad tickets at Oderberg, on the
Austro-Prussian border, for Bremen, and distribute
them among the group of men that so accompanied
him. I met the same man, who thus purchased the
tickets at Oderberg, a few days later at Bremen, and
upon my questioning him for the whereabouts of his
friends I saw in his company at Oderberg he denied

LEGISLATION AND EVASION 287

all knowledge of them ; but I saw all of them in the
immediate vicinity, and found that they had steamship
tickets in their possession which were procured in the
office of F. Missler. They were no longer in groups,
and acted in a manner as though they had never seen
the man who had led them, this being evidently part
of their instructions and a matter of precaution. I
could refer to hundreds of similar cases which I have
encountered in my travels abroad. Most of these
people so interrogated by me were in possession of
addresses of persons residing in the United States, al-
leged to be friends or relatives, but which, to my best
impression and belief, were frequently fictitious ad-
dresses, and the addressees absolutely unacquainted
with the emigrants in question. Most of these ad-
dresses referred to persons residing inland, particularly
in the States of Ohio and Pennsylvania, and rarely to
people residing in New York city or other Atlantic sea-
ports. Unfortunately, these emigrants are so thor-
oughly instructed and prepared, that it is exceedingly
difficult and almost impossible to gain an admission
from them after they depart from their respective
homes.

Supplementing a previous report which I made to
the Department concerning the prevalence of trachoma
in various European countries, particularly Austria-
Hungary, Russia, the Balkan States, and Italy, I re-
spectfully state that so alarming and so widespread is
this most dangerous and contagious disease that the
governments of the various countries enumerated have
adopted most heroic measures for its suppression. In
Hungary this disease has assumed such proportions
that the Government encounters great difficulties in
some counties to muster the required quota of men for
military service, trachomatic people belonging to the
class which are rejected for the army. To combat
and, if possible, to stamp out the disease, the Hun-
garian (Government maintains a special medical corps,
consisting of fifty physicians who constantly travel to
and fro in certain respective districts to which they are
assigned, it being the duty of every person to submit

288 IMPORTED AMERICANS

to an examination for such disease, and if found af-
flicted therewith to present himself or herself for gra-
tuitous treatment twice a week until cured. Records
of such trachomatic persons are kept, and they are
subjected to constant surveillance in the manner that
no person can leave his respective district for another
before first submitting to a medical examination as
above outlined; such person is provided with a book
in which the physician of the district makes an entry
that the bearer is either free from trachoma or afflicted
thereby, and if he has undergone any treatment, the
period of such treatment is entered; upon the arrival
of such person in another district he or she must
present himself or herself immediately to the physician
of that district, and if afflicted with trachoma the
treatment is systematically continued. Although this
rule is strictly enforced, people intending to emigrate
rarely observe it, and in order to be enabled to give
the Department more definite information on this sub-
ject 1 accompanied Dr. Simon Buchwald, one of the
physicians appointed by the Government of Hungary
for the district of Lipto-Szt. Miklos, on one of his
tours through the villages of his district, and was
present at the examinations and treatment conducted
by him. I succeeded in obtaining from Dr. Buchwald
an extract of the official record of thirty-five persons
of the age ranging from seventeen to forty-two
years, who had left the district for the United States,
and were afflicted with trachoma, had been treated
by him, and at the time of their departure were
not cured. Only four of these emigrants returned to
their respective homes, having been refused at the
medical examination, regularly held at the control sta-
tions of the North German-Lloyd and Hamburg-Amer-
ican lines, at the Austro-Prussian border, upon the
ground of this very affliction. I annex the said ex-
tract hereto, marked " Exhibit I," containing the names
of these thirty-five persons, and having underlined
thereon, with red pencil, the names of the four per-
sons thus returned.
Of the countries enumerated, Hungary seems to

LEGISLATION AND EVASION 289

have the disease under best control, although I can
state, on reliable information, that there are at least
60,000 persons in the kingdom of Hungary suffering
from trachoma. The worst conditions in this respect
prevail in Russia, where at least thirty per cent of the
army are afflicted with this dread disease, who, after
their discharge from the army, spread the affliction in
all parts of the empire.

Supplemental to my report heretofore submitted to
the Department upon the subject of emigration to
the United States of Roumanian Jews, I beg to reiterate
that the forwarding of these people is conducted
systematically and is invariably in charge of the Jewish
Colonization Association. The method pursued in
this instance is that representatives of the Jewish con-
gregations in the various places through which these
emigrants pass generally await them at the railroad
stations and care for their safe transportation to the
next station, where the same thing is repeated, until
they reach Rotterdam, from which port they are sent
to England for embarkation to the United States. I
attach herewith copy of the usual letter sent by Doctor
Lowenstein, the representative at Bucharest, Roumania,
of the Jewish Colonization Association, addressed to
the Jewish congregation at Budapest, together with a
translation thereof, advising said congregation of the
near approach of a group of such Jewish emigrants,
attaching also hereto a copy of a list of names of such
group of emigrants, marked " Exhibit J."

With reference to prostitutes and women imported
for the purpose of prostitution, I have made several re-
ports to the Department, and, reiterating the same, I
beg to report in addition as follows: In the cities of
Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Budapest, Lemberg, Krakow, and
more particularly in Warsaw and Wilna, I learned
that annually a number of women and men engaged
in this nefarious business here in the United States pay
visits to the places above enumerated and invariably a
number of such immoral women follow them to the
United States. In many instances these women are
provided with American passports or citizen papers of

290 IMPORTED AMERICANS

their alleged husbands residing in the United States,
and so widespread did I find this traffic in, and issuance
of, American passports in Austria-Hungary, that I
deemed it my duty to call the attention of the Hon.
Bellamy Storer, United States ambassador and envoy
plenipotentiary at Vienna, to the disgraceful practice,
who again, on his part, instructed the United States
consulates under his jurisdiction to be very careful here-
after before transmitting requests for passports for
women intending to go to the United States to join
their alleged husbands, and whose citizen papers are
generally annexed to these requests.

I have the honor also to report that the Hon. Frank
D. Chester, United States consul at Budapest, Hungary,
informed me that there was quite a traffic in United
States passports and citizen papers carried on at the
city of Fiume, and that one of his attaches had some
time ago made a special investigation and reported
about it, I believe, to the State Department at Wash-
ington. In this latter instance, it is my opinion that
the passports and citizen papers are used mostly for
contract laborers, for the reason that, as I convinced
myself during my travel through Switzerland, a sim-
ilar traffic is carried on there for the use of contract
laborers, who mostly come to Switzerland from the
southern part of Austria, Croatia, and Dalmatia, the
business of these countries, in the way of emigration,
being done mostly by steamship agents located in
Switzerland. There is no doubt that hundreds and
hundreds of citizen papers are being sent from the
United States to Europe annually for just these pur-
poses.

Another practice which I observed during my trip is
that most emigrants are in possession of cards of
all kinds of boarding houses, emigrant agencies, and
"Homes" of all nationalities and in all cities of the
United States. I attach hereto one of said cards, of
which thousands can be obtained daily, and mark it
" Exhibit K."

I have pointed out very frequently the fact that steam-
ship companies are unable to ascertain the admissibility

LEGISLATION AND EVASION 291

to the United States of emigrants who present them-
selves prior to their embarkation, except through the
medical examination and the questions put to each of
them, before the final ticket is issued. If the emigrant
is not well enough instructed by those who originally
sent him on his road, it happens that his inadmissibility
is occasionally detected, as I have noticed at the offices
of the Hamburg-American, Red Star, and Holland-
American lines, at the ports of Hamburg, Antwerp,
and Rotterdam respectively, but this is rarely the case.
The emigrant is most thoroughly instructed when he
reaches the offices of the steamship companies, having
undergone perhaps two or more special courses of in-
struction at the hands of the so-called subagents; but
should the answers of such emigrant, in spite of this
instruction, be found faulty in certain respects, it would
be idle to assume that 'the agencies would refuse
to forward him; a striking example, illustrating this
circumstance, may be found in an article of the Ital-
ian newspaper // Dovere, published in the city of
Bellinzona, Switzerland, bearing date June 23, 1903, a
copy of which I annex hereto, marked "Exhibit L."
The article in question will be found on the second page
of said exhibit, marked with blue pencil, which was
sent from Chiasso under like date, relating the story of
an Italian emigrant by the name of Marcaccio Vincenzo,
who on May 2, 1903, sailed for New York on board
the North-German Lloyd steamer Friedrich der
Grosse, accompanied by a woman who had deserted
her husband, in the same manner that said Vincenzo de-
serted his wife, and both of whom, upon their arrival
at Ellis Island, were duly deported.

The article further states that Vincenzo returned to
Chiasso and went to the agency of Jauch & Pellegrini,
where he had purchased the tickets for himself and the
woman, and demanded the return of his money, which
of course was refused. Vincenzo thereupon went to
the authorities and made a sworn statement to the effect
that at the time of purchasing the tickets mentioned he
told the firm of Jauch & Pellegrini that the woman ac-
companying him was not his wife, and that he was

292 IMPORTED AMERICANS

then and there instructed by said firm that upon his ar-
rival at New York he must state that the woman ac-
companying him was his wife. The case of this
emigrant was disposed of in a very simple manner; he
was sent across the border to Italy and sentenced to
eight months' imprisonment for deserting his wife and
committing adultery. The woman in question was
likewise sent to jail for eight months.

I was informed at Chiasso by the other steamship
agents that they had reported this case to their respective
companies, requesting that the agency be withdrawn
from Jauch & Pellegrini, as occurrences of this kind
had a tendency to harm them in their business, but
that nothing was done by the steamship companies in
this direction. I was also informed that the real own-
ers of the firm of Jauch & Pellegrini are the notorious
firm of Corecco & Brivio, at Bodio, Switzerland, who
are the general agents of the Compagnie Generate
Transatlantic^, and to whom reference was made by
Special Immigrant-Inspector Robert Watchorn, in his
report of August, 1902 — Corecco & Brivio are likewise
the owners of La Svizzera Societa Anonima per
1' Emigrazione, at Chiasso, representing the Beaver
Line.

The material collected and the observations made
during my travels abroad would permit of the citation
of hundreds, even thousands, of other instances of a
similar character, and those above enumerated are but
individual cases selected from an abundance of equally
flagrant examples. We cannot escape the conclusion
that a large number of undesirable emigrants succeed
in reaching our shores in spite of the vigorous enforce-
ment of our immigration laws at the Atlantic seaports
as well as the Canadian border, and in spite of the ap-
parent good faith on the part of the steamship com-
panies to comply with such laws. Although this un-
desirable emigration still continues, yet it is my
observation that it has materially decreased in the past
year or so, because of the fact that it is generally
known throughout the Continent that our laws, as at
present administered, are being strictly enforced and

LEGISLATION AND EVASION 293

every effort made to detect undesirable immigrants and
to return them upon such detection. If it were not for
the precautions taken and the excellent work at our
various immigrant stations, as well as the apparent
desire of the various steamship companies to comply
with the law, undesirable immigration would have in-
creased to alarming proportions. I do not mean to be
understood that the law in its present state is in a per-
fect condition, for it still leaves open loopholes for un-
scrupulous steamship agents and their dupes, who
succeed in one form or other in evading the law, in
spite of the vigilance of the officials under your juris-
diction.

I am confirmed in this statement by my observance
of many instances in point, particularly the fact that a
large number of deported and refused emigrants never
return to their homes, despite the fact that steamship
companies provide them with railroad tickets and
necessary transportation to convey them to their
homes.

A significant feature in this connection is the ex-
hibition to me by Mr. A. Storm, manager of the pas-
senger department of the Hamburg-American Line, of a
letter addressed to him by the director of the Royal
Prussian Railroad at Altona, substantially to the effect
that the railroad authorities would hereafter decline to
redeem, at their full value, unused portions of railroad
tickets for points at the Austrian and Russian frontier
presented by passengers at Berlin, but would deduct
twenty per cent therefrom for the trouble and incon-
venience caused by the redemption of so large a number
of these tickets. It is evident, therefore, that some
secret agency is at work deflecting from their homes to
parts unknown such deported passengers who arrive at
Berlin. One reason for such deported and refused emi-
grants not returning to their homes was given me by Mr.
Max Hirschfeld, manager of the Anglo-Continentales
Reise-Bureau, at Rotterdam, which, in its zeal and
activity, is second only to F. Missler, at Bremen, in an
interview which I had with him. He frankly admitted
to me that it had been and is his purpose, when passen-

294 IMPORTED AMERICANS

gers booked by him are refused or deported, to prevent
them from reaching their homes, for the reason that it
would injure his business to have it spread in the com-
munity that passengers booked by him were not ad-
mitted into the United States, and in order to accom-
plish this he cited cases to me where he spent as
much as $100 on individuals for such purpose.

Taking all of the above, together with the experience
gained and the observations made as a basis, the situa-
tion can be summed up as follows:

The deplorable political and financial conditions of
the eastern and southern countries of Europe, coupled
with the prosperous condition of the United States,
creates a large natural emigration to our shores. The
most convincing proof in the eyes of the people of
these countries of the exceptional prosperity of our
country is the large sums of money, almost unprece-
dented to them, which annually arrive from friends
and relatives residing in the United States. Besides
this natural emigration, however, we are burdened
with a dangerous and most injurious unnatural immi-
gration which from year to year assumes larger pro-
portions. This unnatural emigration consists of pau-
pers and assisted emigrants, and is induced and brought
about by the unscrupulous and greedy activity dis-
played by a large number of agencies and subagencies
having well-established connections in the United
States and abroad, apparently unknown to the steam-
ship companies, which activity manifests itself in the
peddling of steamship tickets and prepaids on the in-
stalment plan, both here and abroad, the constant agi-
tation and offers of inducements by subagents in
Europe, occupying semi-public positions, who, in order
to earn commissions, play upon the ignorance and sus-
ceptibility of the plain peasant, frequently inducing him
to sell or mortgage all his belongings for the purpose
of raising the necessary traveling expenses, which lat-
ter transaction is also turned to profit by such agent.

The steamship companies of course do not concede
the existence of such unnatural emigration, as I learned
in the course of an interview which I had with a high

LEGISLATION AND EVASION 295

official of one of the steamship companies abroad. I
called his attention to this unnatural emigration, but
the prevalence of the same was denied by him. " If
all this emigration is brought about by natural causes,"
said I, " and the business would come to you any way,
why do you have so many agencies broadcast instead
of opening offices under your direct supervision and
control, thus saving the commissions you have to pay
your agents?" He replied, that would necessitate the
employment of a large corps of clerks and assistants,
and that the maintenance of such offices would, in the
end, result in the expenditure of a much larger sum of
money than is paid out in commissions. This argu-
ment, of course, does not in the least refute the well-
established fact that there is a very considerable unnat-
ural emigration caused and augmented through the
agencies and methods above enumerated.

I am not prepared to say that there are remedies to
combat this evil, but I respectfully submit and state
most emphatically that the influx of this undesirable
element into the United States could be reduced very
materially if means were adopted to procure the names,
addresses, and, if necessary, the pedigrees of persons
constituting this class of undesirable emigrants. All
of the countries visited by me keep public records of
paupers, criminals, ex-convicts, prostitutes, and dis-
eased; and such records are obtainable, and if placed at
the disposal of proper United States officials the infor-
mation thus at hand would obviate the necessity of re-
lying upon the statement of the emigrant himself, and
would tend to keep out of the United States an ele-
ment which annually invades our shores in so large a
number.

The contract-labor question is somewhat more com-
plex. It is undeniably true that great numbers of con-
tract laborers are annually imported into the United
States, which fact is well-known to Government
officials abroad. If the statement made to me by
Herr Franz yon Kaltenbrunn, Councilor to the Ministry
of the Interior of Austria, can be taken as an argument
in point, it establishes this importation of contract

296 IMPORTED AMERICANS

labor beyond a doubt. Herr von Kaltenbrunn, in the
interview which I had with him, exhibited to me a
rough sketch of an emigration bill, in the drafting of
which he was then engaged and which he said is to be
submitted to the next session of the Reichsrath (Lower
House of Austrian Parliament), such bill being de-
signed for the protection of Austrian subjects who are
being engaged to work abroad, by requiring the con-
tractor or his representative to furnish a guarantee or
some form of security to the effect that the promises
and agreements contained in the contract made with
such laborer, such as safe passage, payment of wages
promised, etc., will be closely adhered to. Irrespective
of this proposed legislation, it would be very difficult,
as stated in the body of my report, to detect the fact
that any such person actually travels to the United
States under contract of labor, and in my opinion
there are but two ways to discover this fact, one being
that some means be found to watch the emigrants prior
to their reaching the ports of embarkation, and the
other by close scrutiny and questioning at the vari-
ous landing ports of the United States. If the various
boards of special inquiry were aided by attorneys at
law assigned to them, a twofold object would be ac-
complished; first, it would lead to the discovery of the
importer of contract labor himself, and, secondly, it
would dispel the prevailing opinion abroad that a large
number of persons are constantly deported from the
United States as contract laborers who, in truth and
in fact, are alleged to be going to the United States
in good faith and not under contract, which I believe is
frequently the case and is due to the fact that the un-
fortunate emigrant becomes so confused by the mani-
fold advices and instructions he receives prior to his
arrival that he is made to believe things he has never
intended to say. The assignment of counsel to the
various boards of special inquiry would also aid them
in every other respect.
Respectfully submitted.

MARCUS BRAUN,
Special Immigrant Inspector.

CHAPTER XXII

WHAT TO DO WITH THE IMMIGRANT

AFTER long and careful study of all the many
and complex phases of the immigration ques-
tion, I have formed a clear and definite idea
of what should be done with the immigrant. The first
suggestion of it came to me when 1 saw how grossly
I, in common with other Americans of the class that is
informed on the average concerning these things, mis-
understood the aliens who come to our shores, and
when I perceived the first indications of preparation of
lies to be told at Naples and at Ellis Island, in order to
evade the laws of the United States. Slowly it was
demonstrated to me that any system which makes
inspection dependent on the word of the immigrant or
his friends is radically wrong. Only a conscientious
analysis of the whole system allowed me to formulate
the proposition I am about to state, and I do it without
prejudice, but with strong conviction that it is the
correct solution of the gigantic problem.

Immigration must be either controlled and directed
or it must be abolished, and the last-named alternative
is eliminated by common sense and considerations of
a humane nature. We need the immigrants. Our
nation owes its strength to-day to those who have
crossed the ocean in other years. Our great industries
need their brawn, our undeveloped regions need their
toil, and we can easily accept 150,000,000 more human
beings as raw material; but they must come as raw

298 IMPORTED AMERICANS

material, — good raw material. That given, our civic
atmosphere, our conditions, our national spirit must do
the rest, and patriots must look to the children of the
immigrants for the best results rather than to the im-
migrants themselves.

Diseased, deformed, or physically insufficient per-
sons are not and never can be good raw material, and
should not be allowed to leave their homes, nor should
any members of their families on whom they are, or
are likely to be, dependent.

Convicts, prostitutes, persons engaged in questionable
pursuits, anarchists, radical socialists, and political agi-
tators are a menace to the body politic, though reason-
able inability to make a livelihood should be considered
a mark of pauperism rather than failure to accumulate
any property whatsoever under European conditions.

The true conditions of all such persons is readily
ascertainable from the civic, police, and military records
in the communes of their residence, to which can be
added the supplemental evidence of their neighbors
and the local officials of the communes. In the com-
munes of their nativity the truth is known and cannot
be hidden. At the ports of embarkation combined in
fluences can deceive the best officials. At the ports of
arrival the hand of the inspector is still weaker, no
matter how thorough the examination or how excel-
lent the system.

The conclusion is plain: seek the grounds on which
to deny passage to emigrants who wish to come to the
United States, in the villages from which they emanate.

What seems to me to be the best plan to do this, to
keep the expense below that which it is at present, and
to avoid the opportunities which are sure to be pre-
sented for wholesale corruption of American officials

THE IMMIGRANT 299

by the transportation interests and by the emigrants
themselves, is this:

Select emigrants before itinerant boards of two, three,
or more native-born Americans who speak fluently and
understand thoroughly the language and dialects of the
people who come before them, — these boards to be on
a civil-service basis.

The long diplomatic delays and ensuing red tape of
incorporating the privileges of these boards in treaties
with the several European governments can be avoided
by temporary operation under the present consular
system of the United States, and little objection would
be met with from any of the governments from whose
domains the immigrants come.

In districts from which the emigration is profuse at
present, a smaller number of communes and a more
frequent visitation should be the regulation. The sit-
tings of the boards should be announced by advertise-
ments a sufficient length of time in advance to allow
all persons contemplating emigration to prepare to
appear for examination. Examiners should be pre-
pared to furnish information as to destinations and
opportunities, and could, with care, prevent an increase
of the congestion in the cities of the East. In extrem-
ity, regulations could be made which would allow them
to deny clearance and passage to persons desirous of
going to districts already over-populated with aliens.

As to the requirements for admission to the United
States, our present code of laws has them well defined
except in the matter of illiteracy, and my personal ob-
servation has been that illiteracy does not interfere
either with the value of an immigrant to the civic body
or with the rapidity of his absorption among us; in
fact, the educated class cling more tenaciously to all

300 IMPORTED AMERICANS

that is Old Worldly, and are more inclined to hold
political views that are at variance with our system of
government. That a man cannot read or write his
native tongue does not make him any the worse piece
of raw material here.

When a party of emigrants has been passed and
given papers with photographic identification as well
as detailed physical description, with a time limit of
use of thirty days, it should be instructed as to baggage
so as to minimize this aggravating feature, and should
depart under the charge of a courier, going to the
nearest port of transatlantic departure. This would
work a great change in emigrant-carrying lines, but is
plainly the most convenient and economical procedure
for all concerned. The party could be delivered directly
on board on the day of sailing, and thus all the frauds
and grafting schemes would be avoided. The saving
to emigrants by this method would more than pay for
the expenses of the examination.

It is easy to see how these visiting boards could pro-
mote emigration among the classes which are most
desirable in northern and central Europe, and are now
so chary of coming. Families which have something
to lose by being turned back from the United States
are loath to dispose of their property and make the
venture. If they knew they were certain of admission
before they left their homes, a year's time would see
the level of the grade of emigrants greatly elevated.

Of reforms in transportation, little need be said.
Closed cabins and service of food for groups of six or
eight, with an American Marine Hospital Service sur-
geon in charge of each ship, would bring about all that
is needed, with a few minor regulations.

Ellis Island and the smaller immigrant stations should

THE IMMIGRANT 301

continue their functions much as they are now, only
that little hospital room and deportation quarters would
be needed; the registry feature would be decreased to
an examination of papers for admittance and to the
maintenance of the excellent card-index system. The
distribution and detention features would necessarily
be continued.

To the card-index system should be added a regula-
tion compelling all aliens to report, at regular intervals,
their whereabouts and pursuits, to federal officials in
federal judicial districts, until such time as they be-
come citizens of the country or are ready to depart. A
most important feature of this should be the indexing
and tabulation of the hundreds of thousands of able-
bodied men who have had the excellent military train-
ing of the armies of Europe, and would, if properly
organized, constitute a fine reserve force in America of
at least 2,000,000 men.

Deportation is the severest punishment which can
fall on an alien in comparison with anything less than
several years' imprisonment, and all admissions to the
country should be made probationary ; the commission
of any crime or crimes, and conviction therefor, to be
followed by punishment and then by deportation.
Many of the minor crimes committed by aliens are
done with the intention of getting two or three years
in prison in which to learn to read and write English
and acquire a trade.

The practical statesman will at once object to this
programme on the ground of the terrific expense of
maintaining thousands of men in Europe to consti-
tute these boards of examiners. By careful computa-
tion I have ascertained that it would cost approximately
two dollars per head to examine and admit each immi-

302 IMPORTED AMERICANS

grant, whereas at this time it costs each immigrant
nearly five dollars to be examined, inasmuch as the ex-
tra expense to which the steamship company goes is
added to the price of his ticket. Over and above this
the money he relinquishes to grafters, subagents, ad-
visers, etc., totals a sum that is beyond reckoning.

Summing up, this plan would achieve in simple
fashion the following things:

Undesirable emigrants would be prevented from
leaving their homes.

Ruin and suffering would not fall on those now sent
back.

Desirable immigration would be wonderfully stimu-
lated.

Practices of officials of foreign governments in dump-
ing into this country criminals, foundlings, agitators,
etc., would be ended.

Emigrants would be protected and great economy in
travel would be effected.

Smuggling and underground methods would be dis-
concerted and contract-labor frauds prevented.

Naturalization frauds would cease to avail, and legal
naturalization would be greatly increased.

Custom-house officers would be greatly assisted,
revenues increased, and goods-smuggling minimized.

The proper distribution of the flood of immigration
would be at all times under the control of the Ameri-
can government.

Immigration would cease to be affected, to its detri-
ment, by the business competition of transportation
companies interested' solely in conveying as many
aliens to America and back and forth again as often as
possible, without any regard whatsoever to the class
of people carried, so long as they have the money

THE IMMIGRANT 303

to pay the fares and swell the enormous profits that
emigrant-carriers realize at present.

When these things are achieved, there is no one to
deny that the immigration problem will have been
solved, unless it be those who are ignorant and pre-
judiced in the matter, or who profit by the continued
depression of the grade coupled with the increase in
volume of immigration which mark the present con-
dition in a way to cause every true American, who has
the best interests of his country at heart, to look to the
future with uncertainty and dread.

THE END

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